Nothing Matters: A Noir Love Story

by Steve Finbow

  “Yes, yes, yes,” watch as light slowly seeps out of it. Hold its noses, close its mouths, dispatch it. &, as its breath dies on hand, say,

  “End this.”

  She watches. From a distance. Knows she has power. She notes deaths & loves in a journal she keeps by her bedside. At night, she opens it at random, singing lines from it. Away. Home, Near. Distant.

  Stare into mirror. Knock on door. Open Swiss Army knife. Somewhere. Scissors. File. Toothpick. Saw. Flat-head screwdriver. Tweezers. Stare at face. A… B… C…. D… on forehead. Were there really so many? So many men. From so many places. Abdul. Bogdan. Cesc. Daniel. Hand shakes. Knock on door. Pull surgical twine stitched into skin puckering above right eyebrow. Tug. Tease. Blood blackened. Heavy letters. Ab… Tug… …dul! Sweat waters blood, drips into eye. Knock on door. Switch to scissors. Snip. Snip. Tug. Tug. Bog… …dan. Tipping head forward see whirlpool pattern of shaved head, sweat glistening on scalp, more names there, bodies left out on savannah, bloating in sun, striplight above, reflection of long tube in mirror. Rattle of door handle. Cesc comes easily, twine falling on marble surface, amputated limbs of insects. Dan… …iel. Blood clots in eyebrows. Smear blood over forehead, obscuring names. Take towel, wet, rub brow, rub hard, rub sore… Faintly… Abdul. Bogdan. Cesc. Daniel. Take scrubbing brush. Scrub. Scrub. Rattle of door handle. Voices. On left cheek… Andre. Bongani. Czeslaw. Daisuke. Snip & tug. Tug & snip. Snip & tug. Rattle of door handle. Voices. “Mr X! Mr X!”

  Turn on shower. Step under. Hot water needles. Snip-snip. Scrub-scrub. Twine swimming around toes, newly shaved pubic hair. Washing them away. Names. Names. Erik & Flavio. Guiseppe & Haruki. Ibrahim & Joachim. Keith & Luis. Watch them swirl & drop. Into pipes, gutter, sewers, sea. Her history. Figures on other side of steamed doors. Mikail & Noah. Oscar & Petr. Qasim & Ranjit. Shunyan & Tariq. Blood turns water pink, roseates steam. Turn off jets, see final ones spiraling down hole—Ulvrik & Vassailly. William & Ynyr, Zuriel.

  Shower door opens. Three men in suits. Three large men in suits. Hotel dicks. One holds out towel. Step out. They step back. Quick little dance steps away from splashing water. Watery blood.

  “Get dressed & leave,” one of them says. They huddle together. Through blurred water & blood in eyes—Cerberus. Gaping mouth of hell that is mirror. Life. As one, they look down at cock, candy striped with scars—swollen & weeping incision of her name upon it. Her full name. Never knew. Men bustle me out of room. Make a few pitiful swings. Some half-hearted kicks. Push down on bed. Throw clothes. Jeans, socks… No underpants. Torn shirt. Necklace.

  “The room has been paid for. We’ve been asked to escort you out of the hotel & make sure you leave the city.”

  Say, “Babylon,” to no one in particular.

  “Get on with it,” one of them says.

  Do. Fingers tremble, try to fasten clasp of necklace.

  Say, “Where did she go?”

  “Nowhere you want to follow,” one of them says.

  Hear, “Nowhere. You want to follow?”

  Say, “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  Look at each other, back at me. One steps out of group. Severed head. Don’t see backlift of fist but feel knuckles on bridge of nose. Pain explodes throughout head, bursts small fires of incisions, names. Slip into blackness. Once more. Once. More.

  Through open doors, beast enters room, gingerly steps over discarded sheets of paper, overturned chairs, broken mirrors, walks up to prone figure naked on threadbare carpet, sniffs, licks dried blood from man’s face, shakes, armor rippling, draws back, bares lips, turns tail, bolts back through city, over buildings, disappears into dark desert. More night things. Cats & owls. Coyotes. Wolves. Where there was desert, now there is snow. Where once were dunes, now there are mountains.

  Come to, wipe saliva from face, meaty reek of spit. Where? Where is she? Stand. Head throbs. Mouth parched. Walk into kitchen, drink deeply from cold tap, cordial of rust & iron. Fill basin. Plunge face under water. Open eyes, see swimming cockroaches, ants, pull out, shake head, run fingers over head, feel small bumps, trace of names, scarred past. Think. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Z wants another third. Suicide.

  Look in mirror. Tic-tac-toe of Xs over heart…

  XXX

  XXX

  XXX

  Blanking it out. Cross-hatched. Once was. Lonely hunter. Marks spot. Barefoot, look through papers scattered around room. Blank. Blank. Blank. No clues. No cues. Why & how here? Phone rings. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Trip over upturned furniture, bark shins, stub toes, graze knuckles. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Where is the fucking thing? Stop. Still. Steady. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Shake head thinking it is coming from within. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Follow sound. Out into hallway. Dark. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. There. Stand over, watching. Old-fashioned rotary. Cream-colored. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Pick it up, say,

  “Yes….”

  Dog Eats Dog

  …I hold the handset. Open my mouth. No words. Close my eyes. Think—“Put it down. Leave it. Know I can’t. Know I won’t.” Say,

  “I need you. Tell me a story.”

  Turn off the phone, knowing he knows. Things fly by unbidden. Buzzing. The sound of memory speeded up until near impossible to recall, to sieve. It is not easy to tell stories. Some of us have it. Others do not. The chase is simple. It has a beginning and an end. A finding or and escaping. A discovery or a disappointment. El Dorado, Oz, Jean Valjean, Richard Hannay. It is whether or not you care about the chase. The quarry. The chaser. Who chases whom? Catch me if you can. Kiss chase. Kiss of death chase.

  Even surrounded by mirrors he will never be able to read them all. This is why I have left him the ledgers. The lists. Only in knowing them all can he have real closure. Peace. If that’s what he wants. They all followed. They all faltered. They all failed.

  I take down my Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English from the shelf, open it, lift out the Ruger, heavy, dense. Press the barrel against my teeth, lick the sight, tongue the length, tease the muzzle. Hold it to my right eye, imagine the mass and speed of the bullet. Would I know? Would there be an instance, an intense fraction of time that I would feel? Maybe that’s what it is. When X tortured those men, maybe I was reliving the minuscule moments of non-existence, the flash of not being. Sex, likewise, the more extreme, the less one is like oneself. That escape. We are all escaping something. Some thing. You, me, X, the President of the United States, the gurgling moron pumping his cock in a padded room in Siberia. If I remember, that’s how it begins—with an escape.

  Drugs, drink, violence, sex—means of escape. Memories, photographs, diaries, words—means of containment. If we did not have memory would we have freedom? It is only the memory of me that keeps X alive, keeps him who he is. What if we changed our names and lives after each parting of the ways? I am never the same I as I am when with an other. They exist in me like a small tumor, benign sometimes—like X—malign. Which? Maybe that’s what I am—my body only staying together as a series of networked tumors—my father, Raoul, the politician, the stalker, the hundreds and hundreds of others—and X is the surgeon excising them, slipping them into bowls for further analysis, to know of them and whence they came, slicing them ever thinner, placing them under a microscope, tracing their motives and passions.

  I never really cared.

  Where am I? I am in a cabin in the mountains. The cabin looks out on a theme park. The theme park, built by who knows, who cares, who gives a shit, in the seventies, sprawls across rail tracks and sidings, low wooden buildings ranged in rows, strangely painted in various pastel shades, each assigned a number. The tumbled down bricks of the mock crematoriums covered in a light dusting of snow. The railway cars disgorging the shadows from within. The mounds of glasses, of shoes. The burned remains of tallits and tefillins, Torahs scrolls and blackened menorahs. Abandoned thirty years ago, the theme park slowly fades, the buildings tilt, the wood and brick crumble. I discovered the pl
ace by chance one night. A long drive through the desert, I took a left turn to escape pursuing headlights, stopped the car, fell asleep, woke to see the buildings and the fake railway system, the blocks, the chimneys. I explored, thinking it to be an abandoned mine. Then I saw the piles, the striped uniforms, the insignia. In a building that must have served as an office, I found empty journals. I took out my pen, filled in the names, the dates of my lovers, my haters, my lords of indifference. These are the lost. And I imagined X working here, a death’s head insignia tattooed on his forehead, a third eye, a third I, the straightening jacket, the leather boots, the jodhpurs, the riding crop—the orders for mass annihilation. Wouldn’t that be a thing? The end of the persistence of memory. No more names. No more dates. Nothing but ink. He wouldn’t even have to see them. Open the doors, in they’d walk, close the doors, press the button. The shadow of a giant tail darkening the already darkened windows.

  We’re reaching the end of the journey. I am tired. I have nothing left to give. I am tired of the chase, the games; tired of the sex, the violence. I need something to take me away. I will not contact you again.

  I step out into the desert cold, look up at the clear blue sky. A Thunderbird parked by the main office building; smoke curving up out of the ruined chimney. Then a shadow slips fast over the hillsides—a condor? A buzzard? No, much larger. Maybe a man in a micro-light or a hang-glider. The snow on the hills ripples white. I walk past the wooden huts, the blocks, the crematoria, the empty railway cars, to the abandoned station, the clock long since obscured. I look at my watch, know X is near. Hold my hand up to my eyes, squint and read the sign at the entrance to the theme park—Gewalt Macht Frei—violence sets you free, I squint again and look at the sign, it shimmies in the frigid air, slips, I read Sex Macht Frei—sex sets you free. I raise my head, drink in the cold air, force out a scream that becomes laughter, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, becomes tears. There—coming out of the sky, swooping over the buildings, primeval, primordial, a chittering of keratin and chitin, a long tail, spinal, hanging down, a rending of claws, a gnashing of teeth, a low slurry of saliva, splashes of dark red urine. Through the frosted windows of the office, I see X surrounded by ledgers, standing by a squat rusted stove…

  Theme Park

  …warming hands, looking out of window frosted with ice, abandoned mine buildings slung low & pastel. Smoke drifts across hills. World outside is black & white. Shadow & light. Inverted cross lies tangled on table. From shelf above desk, take down ledger, open it, run fingers down column of numbers, run fingers across row of letters. Take down another ledger, look at lists of supplies—food, fuel, water, clothing. Scar running above right eye pulses & shines. Run finger along it, feel taut & smooth skin, remember swish & pain of scalpel in Babylon hotel room. Reopen first ledger, thumb through pages, ink a blue black, names slant right as if about to tumble onto next line, the next open grave. Look for names. Know they are not there. Look again. & again, until fingers sore & eyes begin to water. Walk to window, look out. Snow on mountains thickens, carpeting rocks, hiding desert beneath, scarred earth. Above. Flash of black tail over tumbled down guard towers.

  Wait but she does not come. She does not come because. On our way, the road changed, & we found ourselves moving away from each other. More. Look. Further away she gets. She has a picture but every time she looks at it it fades & she looks at it a lot because she has to remember face before it fades. Have a recording of her voice. Play it endlessly. Hear movement in air above office. Sure she is saying she is on her way. Play recording again thinking she is nearer. Go out into snow & listen to opening of carapace, beating of wings, strain to hear her voice amongst them. Further away she gets the nearer she gets to being who she is alone. Fuck that. Further away she gets, more unsure. Fuck her. She moves into her body now palpable in lessening memory of past; flee in chase, swooping over mountains in search of her presence. Fuck it.

  Years ago, before the fear, before the quick glances of blackened vertebrae, I read that in Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes describes how males & females were once one being; possessed of great strength they threatened the gods, & the gods tore them asunder, now each part constantly seeks its twin—this is the origin of love. Shingleback skinks, golden eagles, whooping cranes, grey wolves, gibbon apes, bald eagles, French angel fish, red-tailed hawks, prairie voles, black vultures, & anglerfish. Dark, illuminated intermittently by creatures down there, down there in deep, cold; male anglerfish (Linophryne arborifera—toad that fishes with net), tiny compared to female, follows her scent trail. Finds her amidst vampire squid & long-nosed chimaeras, bites her, hangs on. Their skins fuse, their bodies merge. They mate for life. He dies first. Of course.

  She first reached the place. Reached the place where she will never be. We stop. We linger. Long. She will not return. Will not forget. Photograph is blank. Delete her voice. She remembers—just. As a mark. Once had a bold tattoo. There is no returning. There is always memory. What is memory? Memory is trauma. Memory is freedom. Look at my knuckles. H***. **Z*.

  Day after drive to roadhouse, day after, found ring of dead bees, told story of lovers who lost each other; one for ever gone, the other for ever needing; but if the world is what we proclaim it to be, there must be a chance that some day, somewhere, we will find each other again, or maybe not; maybe the memory of who we were, created in absence, is all that will remain of a presence once singular & temporary. Open door, strip to underpants. Lie down…

  Two Mammals

  ...on a wire bed frame. X dressed in white underpants. He is filthy. He has no face. He has a face. He has no arms. He has arms. He has no legs. He has legs. He rolls off the bed. He jumps in the air. I take out the photograph, look at it. It could be anyone. It could be no one. It fades as I look at it. It fades. He crosses to the window. In the room: a standard lamp, a wardrobe, a chair, a rug, the bed frame. On the walls are: a round mirror, a painting of a sailboat, a row of coat hooks. There is a door. There is a window. But we’ve said that. X lands. Bends his knees. Opens his mouth. Out flies a small brown bird. The bird flies against the window. Falls. Dies. He opens the wardrobe. On hangers in the wardrobe are hundreds of photographs of me. X takes the bird, opens the window, throws it out. Closes the window. Opens his mouth. Laughs. The door opens and in I walk dressed in a fur coat, high heels, a hat with a feather, a veil. I lift the veil. I have no mouth. I have a mouth. I have no eyes. Never. I have eyes. Always. X walks around the room. Runs. He does not look at me. He faces the wall, tearing at it with his fingers as he runs.

  Says, “I really want to kiss you.”

  I say, “That wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

  There are two people in this story—let’s call the man X. To dehumanize a person authorities (authors) designate that person a number—Number 6. 168904. But to call a person by a letter, by the initial of their name, layers on them a form of mystery, of unknowing. K, O, Mr X. The secret name of god. Somewhere in the mountains of Nevada, high up and nestling in a rocky hollow, an abandoned theme park—rusting railway lines, broken-down chimneys, piles of things. Things that make us who we are. Who we were. What is it that drives humanity to record? To list? To catalogue? Are there too many things to recall? Too much information? Notebooks, cameras, computers, phones—and the admixture of all—are appendages to our memory, mnemonic prostheses. Only death stops this. Death undoes memory. Death completes it. Take X and I (Z). X loves me. I love X. No, I don’t. In X’s memory I loved X. In my memory—well, nothing happened. Nothing happened between them. Nothing at all. He asked me. I told him. Nothing happened. From the very first.

  “I really want to kiss you.”

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

  X’s memory begins in our first meeting. My memory is a long list of similar encounters. Shoah—if six million Jews died, how many does it take to remember them? How long does the memory abide? Who interprets it? In the theme park, I found a small office build
ing one could easily mistake for an outhouse; within its crumbling wooden walls, rickety shelves held dozens and dozens of ledgers. Leather covers? Golden words. Crinkled spines. I took down the leather volumes and began to fill the columns and the rows with names, names of men, names of men and women, names of those long dead, long dead to the memory anyway. But then, who would know? Who would know that these people no longer exist? Once written down, they disappear. They disappeared. The only way to resurrect them? To have someone read their names, run their fingers along the rows, the columns, form their mouths into tiny explosions of existence—Raoul, Cesc, Ynyr.

  Language is like a road movie, a chase—there are certain places to stop on the way to the final point, the points of meaning, of relevance; then there’s the action in between; the clothing and the music and the hairstyles. Nouns, verbs. Hotels, roads. People, sex. Silk thongs and inverted-cross necklaces. Tattoos. Above the theme park, in a nest made of bones lined with human skin, a monstrous creature—not bird, not insect, not reptile, not mammal—sits and waits, occasionally taking to the sky in an effort not to foul its nest with urine and faeces. The creature is a form of gargoyle, an amalgamation of everything that has ever lived, the reification of all our fears, jealousies, loves, hates, paranoias, hopes, and longings. Invisible to the human eye, it can be heard on dark nights chittering, saliva dripping from its awful jaws, waiting, watching.