Nothing Matters: A Noir Love Story

by Steve Finbow

  “I will not contact you again.”

  Insides belly-flopped—paraplegic Samoan diver—looked at her imploringly & she laughed & turned away. Hit her & hit her & hit her. Dreamed it. Dreamt it. Hallucinate it. Looked up to see black tail whipping over buildings. Now, in motel room, lift from the floor infinity symbol of her black silk panties, sniff them, put them in pocket. Outside, sun dripping honey in translucent sky. Ring of dead bees. Her car gone, tracks fishtailing out of lot read “follow me”. Do so. Always.

  See Z gun machine towards Babylon, its skyscrapers & ziggurats mere insects on windscreen. Babylon or theme park? Tail of the beast. Foot on pedal, tongue lodged against teeth. Infinity symbol glistening in pocket. Imagine. Z looks into rear-view mirror, eyes turning from grey to blue & back, mouth open seductively, cruelly, Z thinks of taste of him, sweet molasses, salty, ferrous, knows her saliva is his insulin, his life. Babylon is where they are always going—proliferation of tongues. In mirror, her freckles are a million tiny planets—an explosion of Mars & her laugh lines are its canals. Z runs hand up inside of her thigh, one hundred miles per hour now & going faster, faster, slips finger into vagina, moist with thought of X, runs fingers through X’s hair, pushes deeper, lips on hers. Car shakes, rattles, & moans, & a roadside sign says Neverness one billion miles & Z laughs, throws her head back. Trailing her, eyes full of tears, hear it—Isadora Duncan’s scarf wrapping around the Thunderbird’s wheels—gaining, pulling her in, road swallowed—a long dark tickle of liquorice. Cock pulsing to engines pounding. Z’s laugh again, a flock of doves heading into night, meteor burning out on distant planet. All words in dictionary, falling ash & confetti on a lonesome iceberg adrift in unknown ocean. Z looks back & shouts,

  “The feeling of looking in someone’s mind—of trespassing somewhere so private—is like rape. Forget me.”

  See burning coals of her taillights—a stalking beast. Edge closer, howling in sorrow & dread. Know that something wrong has happened in world, something has come untied, gone adrift. Hear the chitinous rattle, the chattering of a million teeth, the dripping of saliva. Splash of dark red urine on windscreen. One hundred miles per hour & heading for…

  The Late World

  …Babylon. That’s where I’ll do it. I wasn’t ready. The thing with the coals in the paper bags—that was to make him run. I could feel him watching me in the shower, see the shadow of his presence through the steam and the droplets. The problem with X is… The problems with X are… Closure. Closure. Closure. I’ll close it, I’ll end it, I’ll finish this. I look in the rear-view, see the Thunderbird straining to catch up, to close the space between, to fold time. He remembers things differently. No doubt he told you about a sylvan scene, our riverine rendezvous—never happened. He fucked me in his scumbag bachelor pad—all noodle cartons and empty beer cans, New York Doll’s posters and chipped mugs, tattoo, motor, and girlie mags. What’s he told you? How we came together? How we came undone? The night I pretended to cut his name from my arm. Never there in the first place. Smoke and mirrors. An artist friend with a collection of colored inks. A gel pad from a brassiere. A mixture of ketchup, mustard, and brown sauce. As if I would disfigure myself. For him? His knuckles—HOPE and my name… a middle finger Z. Flip him the bird in the rear-view, see the Thunderbird’s lights shine angrily, flash and fade. See his raised finger—the inverted Z, the inverted cross around his neck.

  Babylon—city of ziggurats and hotels, of casinos and call girls. Home of gargoyles and flying monkeys, fake unicorns and faux dragons. Check in to the Notre Dame Hotel, watch the bellhops and porters squirm as I walk through the lobby. Set out my implements on the bed—the scalpels, the surgical twine, the ink, the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, the gun nestled inside. I’ll turn off the lights, leave the door ajar, wait in the delicious dark, my panties oozing with anticipation, my nipples hardening. One more was all I asked. One more body. Had his desire for me softened the one thing I didn’t want softening, the thing I saw in his eyes at the charity gig—that regressive gene, that surging need to escape himself? Before me there was no one and after me there were even more no ones. Nobody. No bodies. The last time we touched.

  I’ll order California rolls from room service—the smooth avocado, the salty crab, the cool cucumber, the smoky pepper of the tobiko. My breasts, his semen, my life, the flying things that live in the sea. Our first meal together—he had salmon roe, those perfect globules of first blood. Or, in their casings, a spent cock bruised and angry. My forever unfertilized womb. Raoul’s brains trickling out onto the sun-splattered tarmac. The collection of colored beads my mother left me—vermilion, wine red, scarlet, brick red, burgundy, pillar-box red, carmine, cherry red, carnation, claret, crimson, damask, garnet, magenta, maroon, oxblood, puce, ruby, blood red. Coquelicot—poppy red, poppy sleep, poppy dream. The tail whipping over the horizon, dangling from beneath the clouds, leaving tracks in the thin snow of the mountains.

  I can feel the Thunderbird closing, know its tick and rumble, hear him scream my name… **Z*!!!!!!! Know he’s thinking of my eyes—arsenic and old lace, ash and anthracite, battleships and submarines, Bosch and bistre, Confederate and Waffen SS, cinereous and seal-like, gunmetal and glaucous, ice and isabelline, silver and sable, platinum and porpoise, slate and steel…

  I gun the car, put distance between us. The towers and pyramids of Babylon rise out of the desert. The curve of the earth. Armadillos scuttle across the road. I swerve to hit them. Watch them bounce along the asphalt, roll to the roadside like severed heads. Hear X whoop and holler! Smile at myself in the rear-view—my pouting mouth, my lips flushed and full, the freckles like dusty stars in a pale pink heaven. Splash of dark red urine. Slip my hand between my thighs. The erotic brail of my stubble. Slip in my middle finger, slip in my ring finger, second-knuckle deep—just like X used to do, leave them there for a mile or so. Take them out. Taste myself. Vanilla sweat and orange-water. Open the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, take out the gun, run the cool barrel over my labia, rub my clitoris, put the gun barrel in my mouth, suck its length, replace it in the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Look up… See the snail trail left by the black chitinous tail, spine-,marks, vertebral signs, slime—the sign reads Welcome to…

  Babylon Burning

  …Babylon. Flying monkeys wear bow ties, horses sport fake horns that make them look like unicorns. Slip valet a quarter. Shows the car, steaming with heat of desert, cool of her. Shakes his head, his body trembling,

  “Did you see those eyes, man? Did you?”

  Nod, touch his arm knowingly, & a tear drips down his cheek, & he says, “Shark grey, rain clouds, & the silver of pharaoh’s Egypt.”

  Say, “Yes” Say, “No.”

  He leans forward, whispers a number.

  Say, “Of course.” Say. “Did she have anyone with her?”

  Shakes his head. Ride elevator, walk along corridor to her room. Door open. Walk in. Always following. Curtains closed. Room decorated in late-Nebuchadnezzar style, smells of her—ice-cream hurricanes. Cross room to read scroll hanging on far wall. All goes dark. Come to, naked & tied to bed. Gag in mouth. Exquisite agony. Look down. Body—as much as can see—covered in millions of tiny cuts. Blood washed away. Z steps out of bathroom, naked except for pair of high-heel snakeskin Jimmy Choo’s, scalpel, & mirror. Try to spit out gag, taste black silk of her infinity. X kisses cheek. Holds mirror. Face—a chaos of small incisions—Z traces first.

  She laughs & traces second, runs nail inside them, opens them up, so many oysters, licks blood leaking from them. She holds cock delicately in her right hand, bends down to it, says,

  “You see?”

  Saymuffled, “What is it?”

  Z bends closer. Can feel her breath on empurpling glans, feel eyelashes on receding foreskin, & she says,

  “Your weakness.”

  Black out. Black. Out.

  Open eyes. From somewhere can hear 1-2-3 count of waltz. Open curtains let in
pale lemony light & motes of dust, swarms of miniature birds. See snail-trail of vertebra smeared across window. Look down at body. Cuts sutured with thick black cotton. Z steps out from bathroom naked on high heels. Walks over to bed slow & easy. Straddles. Tightens gag.

  Saymuffled, “Found you.”

  “I don’t want to be found,” Z says. “I want to be lost & for you to ever search for me.”

  She stares. Her eyes. Will describe. Can’t. Try. Moon reflected in water shot through with hyacinth. Gunmetal kingfisher. Platinum periwinkle. Pewter & ice. Silver irises. Neptune’s grey dawn. Her left eye, off-centre as if she were always on the look out for her other, her double, her shadow. Third that walks beside her. Knife blade of her hips, firmness of her buttocks. Cock hardens, feel stitches tear & snap & she lowers herself onto it, onto, her sex dripping with dreams, her pupils as black as death, bullet holes in fur of timber wolf. Her thighs grip, drawn up, legs of grasshopper. Z throws her head back, her chestnut hair caught in light turns copper. Her mouth open. Resist, fail, resist again.

  Saymuffled, “Should have killed you.”

  Z laughs. Stops. Laughs again. Her perfect breasts arched high, her nipples pointing to heaven. Feel heels of her snakeskin shoes dig into skin, gouge holes as she moves back & forth, riding, demon cowgirl. Grit my teeth.

  Saymuffled, “No.” Saymuffled, “No.”

  Z stops.

  Says, “I have to go now.”

  Bright lubricate pearl bubbles on tip of cock. Aching.

  Z throws on a coat, goes into bathroom, exits with something hidden in a towel. Saymuffled, “Will kill you.” Shoutmuffled, “Bitch!” Whispermuffled, “I love you. Loved.”

  Z walks out of room. Lift head. Outside window, seemingly perched on sill, squats monstrous pterodactyl. Blink. Shake head. Think, Can’t be. Look around room; outside each window, a beast—hideous monkey, grotesque dog, grinning dragon. Sheela na Gig. Think. Think Gargoyles. Yank hand from ropes, tear muscles & tendons. Here? Hear? Chittering. Jaws grinding together, lubed with thick saliva. & gargoyles turn their heads, cackle & snarl. Petrify. An ancient forest unfound for years uncovered by nuclear blast, trees flattened, no birds, butterflies turned to dust turned to air… Splashes of dark red urine. Think Z, think of blackness, think…

  Fighting or Fucking

  …why didn’t I kill him then? Smothered him with a towel. The easiest way, while he was unconscious. I could have cut out his heart, his eyes, his longing. Is it because I need him in my life but do not want him there? Like a disease that keeps you slim, a virus maintaining your youth, a parasite sucking out all of the bad things, the evil, the toxins and the poisons. Heat-seeking. Heart-seeking. Love is a many splintered thing. Mirror shards reflecting the incremental changes between hate and love, between desire and violence. Hotel rooms capture this, replay back the myriad human exchanges. They’re not beasts on the windowsill, they are the lies and the untrue stories made flesh: “Of course I love you,” “Yes, I will tell my wife,” “My husband is having an affair,” “Yes, I would do anything for you,” “Would you kill a man?” “I really want to kiss you, right now,” “That wouldn’t be a very good idea,” “I have to go now.” “I will not contact you again.” See how easy it is?

  When I met X, I felt he made me whole. He was the tool that tightened my will to violence. Yet, after the first, that feeling became undone and I realized that any man could be that. He’d shown me how but I knew I could do better. The roadhouse was a meeting place of dead souls needing things to do. And what do men do best? Yes. That’s right. Violence. Violence is not the flipside of love, it is its dark other. “What are those dogs doing, mummy?” “Fighting. Now, stop looking.” Teeth bared, hair risen, haunches flexed, lips curled. Love is the fear of abandonment. Love is the wrong answer to the right question. Love surrenders itself to some other.

  Perched on the building opposite, tentacles flailing, tail whipping the electric air.

  I walk the carpet-padded corridors of the hotel. Chambermaids look away as I pass them; bellhops and porters stare in astonishment. I have hidden my eyes behind large oval sunglasses, their brown lenses reflecting the symmetrical landscape of the hotel. Queen of all Insects. My eyes have done enough harm for today. The cuts will take a few weeks to heal. When they do, he will be able to read my true life on his body. All the men made flesh. He will not be able to move a limb, bat an eyelid, cross his fingers without reading their names. Tattoos of jealousy will pursue him. In the middle of the cut I carved around his heart, I inscribed a tic-tac-toe of names:

  XXX

  XXX

  XXX

  None of them are him. X is what once was and for those that cannot be named.

  I open the door to the second room. Look out of the window. See the lapidary beasts crouching, growling, fogging the windows with their foul breath. Imagine X straining to read my history. Will he follow? Should I let him? The place I am going is a place I have never been. A place where history ended long long ago. A place where the human body became nothing more than a product—more accurately, a bi-product of existence. But not really. Broken down, it became fuel, became nothing—the matter of nothing. Stuffed pillows. Necklaces. Ashtrays. A conversation piece—if that’s the kind of conversation you want. But not even that. It is the simulation of that. The copy. So authentic. So inauthentic. But, then, isn’t everything? Everyone?

  Sentimental I’m not. X once told me I was his life. And I replied, “And I am your death also,” I saw the rise in his left eyebrow, the tightening of his forehead, the skip of his inverted cross as his Adam’s apple jumped. Truth is what you make of it. Truth is Plasticine, malleable, pliable, slave to kneading thumbs and probing fingers. Reality likewise. Do you believe? Are you a believer? Did they all exist? Daddy? Raoul? The politician? The stalker? X? Maybe we made them all up. Lured you here. You followed me through the open hotel room door. I showed you the beasts misting the glass with their meaty exhalations. Did you hear the door close behind you? The soft clunk of the lock? Is that sweat I can see on your upper lip? Feel the prickly heat of your armpits. Your crotch yeasty and itching. Sphincter loosening and tightening. Maybe X is on my side. For whom do you feel sorry? Put it another way. Who do you feel sorry for? You’ve come this far. I’m sure you want to know how it will end. After all, like X, all you want is closure. A finale. The denouement. You would argue that road trips have a beginning and an end and all the rest is middle, narrative filler. The roadhouses, the crash pads, the bars, the hotel rooms, are all locations of action, where it happens. Sex and violence used as a release. The bookmark slipped in like a post-coital cigarette or glass of sweet sweet cider. The two voices like the angel and the devil perched on your shoulders, whispering, cajoling, soothing. How would you like it to end? Ssh! Fantastically? Realistically? In a splatterpunk shower of gore? A leafy glade with blooming roses? A deus ex machina? A god from the machine. St Michael piloting in a helicopter? St Gabriel riding a micro-light? A ninja Lucifer dropping silently out of the night sky? Kali swooping down under a black silk parachute?

  Would you want us:

  A—to get together, ride off into the sunset, hand in hand, cheeks aglow with the dawn’s blush?

  B—separate forever, walk off in different directions, straining not to look back?

  C—X kills Z?

  D—Z kills X?

  E—none of the above?

  I press my ear to the wall, listen. I can hear the tearing of surgical thread, like the rending of insect wings from the thorax. I should have stitched his eyelids together, his mouth, his anus, his urethra. Imagine those fluids backed up, the festering wounds. I hear X worrying the binds with his teeth, the dead animal taste of leather, the steel buckle chipping his teeth. Should I go in and finish him now? You tell me. Get it over with. Get it done.

  Come with me. Look. Babylon. The living always outpace the dead. But that will not always be so. I think, from the very minute I was born, the second my head pushed out into the worl
d, bloodied and bawling, I have sought the end of days. Don’t struggle. Look. Through the smudge of your cheek on the window—there, on the horizon. See it? That’s where we are going.

  I call down to reception. Pay for both rooms by credit card. Check out. Leave the hotel via the service elevator. 654321. Ask the spavined valet to bring the car. Be calm and you can ride up front. Clean the windscreen. Splashes of dark red urine. I look up and watch the beasts leave, peeling away from the windowsill into the air, the stone-colored clouds accepting their ingress. A figure appears, hands pressed against the glass leaving bloody banners trailing down the window, nails screeching, forehead banging against glass. X opens his mouth…

  The Sublime Persistence of Stupidity

  …scream Z’s name. Would it ever end with her? Stop following, dreaming? No. Maybe. Kill her. Forehead presses against plate-glass window of hope. Foot in door labeled desire. Elbowing through cruelties, desertions, neglect. Moving through multiform substance of world with eyes fixed firmly on never-to-be. She dangles in front of me, some beautiful fly, thrash out of morass of denial, leap in air to catch taste of her diaphanous wings, only to flop sadly on muddy bank, gasping for air, for love. Look for color of her eyes in cyanic expanse of sky, grey dawn, murmur of silver moon reflected in glass of curaçao. Z rides night. In her wake, she leaves bloody remains of discarded suitors & lovers. Shrunken hearts, torn pages of hated poetry, empty shells of alphabets. & they watch her go—those pathetic souls—watch her long legs, her perfect ass, smooth & strong arch of spine, sway & ripple of her chestnut hair. & she carries with it love’s limbless torso. Go to it, soothe it with empathy, say,