Nothing Matters: A Noir Love Story

by Steve Finbow

  “………”

  “I hired him to find my missing husband.”

  “………”

  “Yes.”

  “………”

  “That’s very unfortunate.”

  “………”

  “How dreadful.”

  “………”

  “That’s a rather vague description.”

  “………”

  “Inverted-cross necklace, tattoos on his knuckles.”

  “………”

  “No, I can’t say I do, officer.”

  “………”

  “Of course.” I pretend to write down a name and number.

  “………”

  “Good day to you.”

  So, X has killed The Gourd. If I didn’t want to see X, I hear you thinking, why hire The Gourd to find and follow him? Well, if I know where he is, I know he’s not with me. If that makes sense. I know he’s not waiting in a corridor, down an alley, sitting behind a newspaper at Starbucks, waiting for me. I know he’s not sitting in a car outside my apartment reading one of those boring books, one eye fixed on the door, the sidewalk, the next table.

  After he killed the first two, I needed a break. Take some time off from men and I decided to go to Babylon, to a hotel I knew. He followed. He always did. Always does. Maybe not now. Maybe. The hotel, called The Hotel Notre Dame, was a favorite of mine. The staff respected your privacy. None of them blinked at the succession of men who entered and sometimes left my room. The maids aligned the scores of shoes I threw in the bottom of wardrobes, hung up my dresses strewn around the room, tidied away the bottles of sweet cider I’d ordered from room service, the untouched club sandwiches, the half gnawed California rolls. While explaining how he killed my politician lover, I sucked him off, his semen spurting over my chin at the exact same time as his final full stop. Period. While he told me about the ex who couldn’t let go, how he’d cut off his fingers and toes so he could no longer hang on, I kissed the nape of his neck and jerked him off slowly but firmly, felt the warm cum in the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger, licked it off. Swallowed. Told him to leave. He said he would never kill a third. But he has now. That one stupid rule. I’ve made him overstep the mark. I always have done.

  The next time we met, he told me about the nightmares, the shrinks, the lies. The chitinous black tail always out of reach, saliva shiny. I didn’t care. I never do. But something in me wanted him. Wanted the stories. Wanted the control. Wanted him to want me to want him. And I did. I needed him. Needed him to kill them. Get them out of my head. Out of my memory. Clean. A clean slate. Tabula rasa. Palimpsest. And that’s how it felt after my father killed Raoul. He found him up a ladder peering into my room. I knew, of course, lying there with my legs open, a see-thru thong, white lace bra, pretending to read Blood on the Dining Room Floor. Saw his head, hands pressed either side, wings that would never save him, then his head move back, and a shout and a thud, and my father standing over Raoul’s twisted body. While my father called the police and the paramedics, I masturbated on the bed, my mind, for the first time blank, no fantasies, just the physical sensation, overwhelming, intense, void of men. Still flushed when the police interviewed me, still tingling with the incredible whiteness of the orgasm, a field of ice, a glacier. An accidental death. Both mine and Raoul’s. A last fall and a forever falling.

  I pick up my phone, dial a number, ask a favour. Tell them where I think he is. Two of them this time and this time I need it done. Need it over. No more following. No more chases. No more motels and hotels and restaurants and bars. The bruise on my face a heat map of Mars—oranges and greens but mostly blues. I plug my iPhone into the portable speakers while I change. “Venus in Furs” by The Velvet Underground, followed by “Don’t Call Me Pain” by The Pop Group. I dress in a Neptune-blue sweater, Vivian Westwood jeans over knee-length black leather high-heel boots. I gather up my things, close the zip on my bag. Step to the blinds, lift two, separating them with my thumb and forefinger, suppress a memory, look out onto the courtyard wanting and not wanting a black Thunderbird to be there. Splash of dark red urine on window. I look at the barometer on the wall, the mercury is falling, dark clouds drift overhead…

  Memory Motel

  …rain. Thunderstorm. Roads slick & wet. Doing a century. A ton. Lean down, flip open glove compartment. Check what’s there. Half-empty bottle of absinthe, a shooter. Must’ve left them there last night. Hold on. Couldn’t have. That was a car of another color. Must be someone else’s booze, someone else’s piece. Oh, well. Before return to motel, go for spin on freeway. Yank car over. Gun thing through oncoming cars. Up on ramp & onto long unwinding liquorice. Rain’s heavy, thick mist turning cars that have braved it into indistinct blurs of color. Crank up music, sing along to Killing Joke’s “Requiem”. Can’t see squat. Open windows, air causes arms to erupt in goosebumps. Pass a car, swerve in front making driver hit brakes, slide & spin onto hard shoulder. Hear his horn until opening power chords of Queens of the Stone Age’s “Go With the Flow” drown it out. Drum fingers on steering wheel.

  Blur of colored metal thinning out & rain still thickening. Can’t see central barrier or traffic signs. Hit crowd of traffic cones that go spinning & swirling off into the distance, raspberry syrup in a vanilla shake—shit!—haemospermia. FUCKING HAEMOSPERMIA! Chuckle, start to cough, spit, close windows. Driver’s side shatters, covers ace with glass. Look. Nothing. Look back, see rip in headrest. To right, bullet embedded in passenger seat. Ahead, see two shapes, rectangles moving together, slowing moving aside to let me through middle. Fuck that. Take out gun. Check it. Full clip. Come on, then.

  Two cars slow either side. Filling. Can’t see jack, can’t see jill, so no idea who they could be. Move in & sparks fly. Smell burning. Window of car to left slips down, see open-mouth surprise of Dan Wesson Razorback. Accelerate, brake, accelerate again. Two cars stay. Car to right falls back, punches, comes level. Window down, empty-eyed stare of Purdy. Nice. Look up at sky but it’s not there. Just drops of rain. Mist. Mist fucking everywhere. Bite bottom lip until blood. Cars move in, clamp in their metal embrace.

  Movie-type stunt. Stop. Duck. They shoot each other. Game over. But, no, it doesn’t work like that in real life. Dip down, they shoot each other & take off an ear. Really wouldn’t do. Have to be practical. Common-sensical.

  Put foot down & drag cars along. Terrible screeching. Don’t have to steer. They’re the ones in control of where we go from here. Both arms where they have only two between them. Take out one on right. Two shots. One goes fucking nowhere, other goes in temple. Boom. Car veers off, lost in mist. Jerk steering wheel to left, other car slices along barrier. Sparks lighting up gloom. Pull wheel to right, put foot down on brake, last moment turn wheel left again, catch rear right bumper, off goes car, spastic dance until broadsides & flips, one, two, three, four times, lands on roof in centre reservation. Watch tail disappear into mist, looping over bridge’s balustrade, leaving snail trail of glistening slime. Slow down. Park behind. Get out. Smoke mingling with fog. Driver upside down. Looks like neck is broken. Take out cock, stroke it. Faster. Faster. Juggernaut rushes by in blur of rain & mist. Come over driver’s eyes. Wa-ho-ha!

  Zip up. Check his pockets. Nothing except protruding bones & gristle. Say, “Who the fuck are you?” Could be one of many. Could be anyone. Could be someone. That’s the problem. Walk back to car. Get in. Fuck was that all about? Look ahead, see two flashing orange lights above me, a giant tiger with serious blinking problems. Nictitating in the rain. Can hear sirens. Fuck. Sirens. Fuck sirens. Fuck her. Better get a move on. Move on. Move. They won’t have a clue in this stuff. Cameras aren’t going to pick out anything. No witnesses. Well, two dead ones. No evidence. Not a secreter. Turn car back onto highway, head slowly towards next off-ramp.

  A hobo camp—right now, envious of tics on female dog’s teats; desirous of calluses on feet of children, hankering for a sup of that shiny liquid; longing for feel of burning coals
in sun-tattooed palm of hand. Sound horn. Men drink their drink, children play in rain, dogs piss against washing-line poles. Grab absinthe, take a swig, wipe mouth, slot bottle into crotch holster. Snug. The Clash’s “Lover’s Rock” plays. Mouth moves in contractions & spasms as it reacts to Mick’s guitar & Paul’s bass. Must look ridiculous but don’t give a shit, drumming steering wheel. Right. Think about this. Think about her. Spend time in desert living on bread & water, before I visit…

  Sunset Debris

  …my bar, a music bar somewhere on the road between LA and Barstow, a stop for truckers, fuckers, and no-luckers. We have booths with personal jukeboxes, a stage for bands and dancers, rockers and strippers, shockers and dippers, the lonely and the never befriended. I bankrolled it through my dead husband’s leavings (he upped and died of shock, the third that never happened)—eventually—after X greased a few cops, threatened the insurance investigators, took a cut, set fire to it, watched my face in the glow of the flames, watched the green turn black, watched the metaphor for exchange turn to ash, watch my lust for him shrivel and die.

  The thing is, once he had done what I asked of him, he was no longer necessary. He stayed around until I found something else for him to do, someone else for him to do, somewhere else for him to be. Not here. There. That was always important. I wanted him close but distant. He was distant but close. Proximity is relative. I saw him through the reverse end of an emotional telescope. His proximal philosophy was to share pulses. Gone but not forgotten. Forgotten but not gone. Never anywhere between.

  The Gourd worked as bouncer and bodyguard, trouncer and fuck buddy. He has a brother who works along similar lines. The music that pulses from the speakers jumps from country to thrash-metal, from punk to bluegrass, from jungle to avant-garde—Boredoms to Schoenburg, Johnny Cash to Rammstein, pumping out full volume, the walls throbbing like a womb, the tomblike lighting. The dancers come in all ages and shapes—skinny Latvians, big-assed Latinas, black girls with legs as long as, Chinese and Thais, Japs and Malays, Russian girls as cool as lilac ice, Mex girls as hot as baked jalapenos. At the end of the show, the girls who have danced that night form a chorus, a forest of flesh, humanity camouflaged with sex, the vari-coloured limbs, the multiplicity and heft of breasts and asses, the dust of their skin cells filling the light. The customers stomp and shout, whistle and hoot, the primeval language of need.

  There are other needs, other primal desires. All my life, I’ve tried to cater for and sustain my drives. Beneath the dance floor, the shiny boards slick with beer and saliva, beneath the bar with its bottles like giant precious stones, beneath the stiletto heels of my dancers—the pit. A place for violence not sex. Cockfights, knife-fights, bare-knuckle boxing—the smell of blood, shit, and urine. The smell of our ancestors. I enjoy them all. Stand at the back watching the crowd’s facial expressions, the grimaces and grins, the fear and the horror, the pain and the gory—dogs with spines exposed, headless roosters, Mexicans with knife slashed and blood red tic-tac-toe scars on their muscled abdomens, willing cuts, spilling guts.

  I thought X couldn’t find me. Wouldn’t find me. For hours, I imagined him pushing open the door, screwing his eyes up adjusting to the light or lack of, walking to the bar, wrapping the wood with his tattooed knuckles—HOPE on the left, my name on the right. Invisible. Unsaid. Always. He orders bourbon and beer, leans on his elbows with his back to the bar, the inverted-cross necklace catching the light. I’d be sitting at the end of the bar. And he wouldn’t see me. Couldn’t. I’d fix him in my vision with my astigmatic eye, feel the greys in it pool and ripple, imagine him trapped there. My lips would pulse and flush at the memory of the taste of him—the ever-decreasing intimacy. I know where we’ll die. Where we’ll escape. There’s an abandoned theme park in the mountains. No barb-wire, no electric fences, no guard dogs. But above it, always just out of sight…

  But I knew he’d stepped over. Never three, he’d said. Two at the most. But now he has taken the third, taken the third who walked beside, the third mind, the third eye, the third man—triangulated his sins: sex, violence, jealousy—the unholy trinity. Stepped up, stepped over, stepped off. When he looks in the shaving mirror he sees my face. When he looks in the rear-view mirror, I am one of those objects that may appear closer. Was closer. Close. Closest.

  Not long ago, two men came to me with a business proposition—they’d help finance the bar, bring in better-looking girls, more violent dogs, champion roosters, psycho boxers, bring in the crowds, all they wanted was use of the cellar bar for one night a month, no questions asked, no answers given—two faggots with muscles upon muscles. I closed the bar one night a month, gave them access, saw the black garbage bags wet with sticky saliva, the spill of black blood and white powder, the impenetrable eggs, the splashes of dark red urine, the burned women’s clothing, the collection of cheap jewelry scattered in the Sunset Debris dumpsters.

  One night, the faggots brought me a present. Straining on its leash, spit running down its jaw, its white teeth glistening, its pink and grey gums trembling, its stub of a tail vibrating. I bent down and scratched its head, its hair short, a strawberry blond and I said,

  “And what’s your name, big boy?”

  And one of the faggots says, “Pinker. He’s an American pitbull. You could do with some protection.”

  I rubbed the dogs ears and looked into his eyes. He gulped and wagged some more.

  “The only thing I need protecting against is myself,” I said.

  “Then he’ll help.”

  “He has pedigree and he’s a champion fighter—his mother Aristar was state champion and his father Heine won thirty-eight consecutive fights. Take him. He likes you.”

  The dog jumped up at me, licking my face.

  “He needs a lot of exercise. Preferably against other dogs.”

  “Yeah, reminds me of someone I used to know,” I said and rubbed Pinker’s belly. The dog flipped over on his back, legs in the air, eyes wide and staring, little cock pulsing pink out of its hood.

  “Spitting image,” I said.

  “Peas in a pod,” one of the faggots said

  “Monozygotic,” said the other

  I smiled, rubbed the dog’s ears, “Dead Ringers,” I said, “Dead ringers.”

  Pinker now sleeps at the end of my bed, licking his wounds while I sharpen his claws with a nail file. Sometimes at night, he cocks his head and listens to the coyotes fucking and fighting. In the morning, he scratches the door, jumps up at the wire-mesh and watches…

  Anything But Lucky

  …yellow & black brindle dogs leaving at daylight, white-tipped tails pointing east towards rising sun. Watch them recede into bubbling heat, step out of motel room onto already baking tarmac. Fucking weather. Door of Thunderbird shrieks, a night thing, climb into red soupy driving seat, hotwire engine, fishtail out onto road, long & black, a squaw’s ponytail. Bats turn into birds, moon dissolves into liquid day. After five hours of driving through arid desert, past hitch-hiking limbs of cacti, bloated coyote carcasses, leprous bodies of armadillos, turn off, roadhouse’s neon sign blinking in gathering dusk: THE OK EAR. Wipe black leather cowboy boots on calves of Levis, brush dust & insects from Boredoms T-shirt, run hand over long black hair, adjust inverted-cross necklace, walk up wooden steps, push open swing doors. She has to be here. Gotta put a stop to this once & for all. The beating wasn’t enough. Since then, had to deal with The Gourd, the nameless car jockeys.

  Room rocks from jukebox groove, men stand at bar elbows dampening in spilled beer, heads shadowed by cowboy hats, chins bobbing to country rock. Small stage, pole in centre, Mex girl strutting her stuff. Stripped to waist, leather chaps tied over tight denim shorts, motorcycle boots. Grips pole with muscled thighs, squirms down, muscular serpent, movements explicit, generative. Pubic hair spilling out of pants, trail of coffee granules carried by ants. Escutcheon. Innate grammar of her sex, yet poverty of stimulus in her thrusts. Gets me thirsty. Order beer, look around room, spot Z sitting on st
ool at far end of bar. Brazen. Feigning invisibility.

  Wears denim dress; legs long & feet shapely. Hair, chestnut brown, hangs to shoulders. Pouting lips. Strong nose. Eyes—moonstone, smoke of pale sapphires, ash of newly milled steel, new rain. Walk up to her, take her hand.

  Say, “I really want to kiss you,” spitting on floor, missing pea-green Blahniks.

  Z looks through me, eyes silver mountain lakes reflecting sky.

  “That wouldn’t be a very good idea,” she says.

  Feel strong hands under armpits, dragged across dance floor. Look around. Fuck, Think. Fuck.

  Man on right says, “What are you doing here, loser?”

  Look at ugly face spattered with moles & growths—The Gourd’s brother? The Gourd 2 punches me in solar plexus, feel vomit rise but swallow back. Man on left, thin & greasy as French fry, yanks head back, whispers in ear,

  “She wants you to fuck off. But before you fuck off, she wants us to fuck you up.”

  Unseen punch cracks nose, bird’s egg. Bundled towards basement stairs. Smell blood & feces rising from blackness. Watch as Z climbs gracefully from bar stool, floats across dance floor, smiling her dirty innocent smile, beautiful astigmatic eyes watching me. Follows her two goons down into what smells like a dog-fight pit.

  Two goons strip me, tie me to post. Hands bound with rope. On knees, watch her long legs approach. Room stinks of urine, faces, blood, & sweat. From her purse, Z takes scalpel, draws heart in blood where mine once was. Look up at her face, palimpsestual slate of her eyes. Z smiles, slices a teardrop into cheek, feel brine of it roll down into corner of mouth, taste color, density. Z steps back, closes eyes. At signal, door back of room opens, hooded figure enters holding dog on tight leash. Frenchy & Gourd 2 nowhere to be seen. Dog snarls, shows teeth, foam flecks muzzle. Short hair, dead sea of rose & bubblegum stubble. Eyes lock on me. Growls.