“Missy never even considered getting rid of the baby. Instead, she asked me to create the illusion to everyone outside the hospital that I performed the abortion. Only Missy, Percy, and myself knew the truth. We devised a plan with Percy’s funds preparing for the birth. A few well-placed bribes and I swung a transfer to the NICU months in advance. We were going to fake an illness, but it ended up coming true. Sepsis. I admitted your daughter. She stayed in the NICU for six weeks. I watched over her like she was my own. I watched over her just as I watched over you, but you’ve only been here for a few days.” Lacking strength to speak, the tears ran down my cheeks, until I could taste them.
“When your daughter was finally better, Missy showed up alone disappearing with the baby down a smoky alley. I didn’t take the money Percy offered to me. I told him to give it to the hospital and to my surprise he did just that.”
“How much?” Tripping Hawaii up on insignificant details would be the best way to figure out what and what not to believe.
“It was a lot.”
“Where’s Chiara?”
“How’d you know her name? I’ll take you to her. C’mon let’s go.”
I ripped the IV’s out of my arms and hopped back on my feet. Fresh pages went flying out from under my pillow. A melancholy breeze took the heavily medicated confetti to the streets. Halfway between two worlds, I expected my legs to crumble, but I hardly felt them. Down a few hallways and a packed elevator, we floated through a purgatorial abyss of patients.
Baby babble slid from the realm of forgotten dreams. Imagination turned to words. I was going to meet my daughter for the first time. I couldn’t stop wondering what she was like. In the lobby, Hawaii quickly slipped through the revolving door, leaving me in the compartment behind her. The silver dollar vixen went haywire when she hit the mosaic pavement, ruthlessly dumping a sick old man out of his wheelchair, only to shove it into the revolving door, jamming it up. I was stuck behind the glass staring at the faces studying me a sea lion in the aquarium.
“Leave!” Missy’s screams shrunk the night’s sirens. I could hear neighbors unlocking their deadbolts to peek out into the hallways. I opened our apartment door only to hear theirs shut. The hallway and steps went fast. The street came easy. I crossed in traffic and sat down in Father Demo Square. I watched Missy run down Bleeker in tears. It hurt being impaled on a spear. I couldn’t move. Only let her run. I hated seeing such pain. I knew if I was the one running, I would need her to take off after me. In spite, I stayed on the bench until she was out of sight. Getting up like a spy I slinked to the A train.
Baffled, Kiko stopped in her tracks, looking me up and down. She dropped the flowers and a teddy bear to the ground.
“Every time, your heart feels more pure.”
“I have a daughter now.”
“You should be holding her then.”
“I want that more than anything.” My head barely moved, slightly swinging back and forth in the small space of the invisible iron maiden, sharper than steel nails.
{XXV}
HAPHAZARD FOCUS DAWNED UPON US. Kiko and I stood in the middle of Times Square looking up with the others. I expected to see a friendly conglomerate mothership landing, but instead… I could only see words… words dripping metaphysically from wounds scarred over… chasing each other compulsively on a giant LED ticker… reminders that best friends died in the same hospital daughters were born… wait and see them again… accept that language is only a sleight of tongue… Yankees ace blows save in extra innings… MTA raises price of monthly metrocard due to increasingly emaciated citizens squeezing through turnstiles together… Lars Wildman, son of recently murdered Featherton publishing czar, dies at Bellevue Hospital after swandiving from the roof of the NYPL … Freedom tower to be renamed because of trademark infringement…
The buildings had their own words. Logistical. Warnings. Words that tell you what already happened while making you feel like you were present when the shit truly went down.
“It’s already out.” Kiko was staring up at a billboard advertising Lars’ new book.
“The Girl In The Elevator.”
Bricks and brownstones, a silent life story, a half smile that wanted to explode whole. We shared the same stride. Far from unconscious, every few steps Kiko’s body would brush against mine. It dawned on me that she was leading me to the closest bookstore expecting Lars to make sense of it all for us. I didn’t have to wonder much if I made it under the covers. He cold-jacked the title from me and I understood how people were torn apart, scrambled up, and put back together as new. Most everyone that ended up in the pages had no idea they were even there. Others tried to get placed inside. Similar to the way they fell into this world, they were trying to fall into another.
“It’s just a block away if I remember right.” Excitement filled Kiko like a kid in a teen mystery who fell in a cave and figured why not explore it. Except this was surreal grit. All hands and minds are dirty. No punches pulled. Kiko was leading us to a place that had special meaning to me and she didn’t even know it. She was guiding me to the spot that changed my life forever.
Sometimes empty is better. The bookstore was losing customers. I wasn’t sure where they went.
“Oh I thought I was alone.”
“No such thing.” Her celestial eyes came at me like a tsunami wave almost knocking the book loose.
“I’m Missy.” Her face sculpted from secluded rocks found inside a holy waterfall.
“Farrow.”
“You give a good first impression Farrow, standing there with that book in your hand as if it was a treasure that only fits you.” The woman could have said anything and I would have agreed.
“Thanks.” Little did she know the book I was holding wasn’t actually a book that was ordered and sold in this particular store. It was a book I wrote myself and printed by mail order in a Canadian milltown. I smuggled a copy or two into every bookstore and library in New York. They could keep the profits and I would keep the readers. At least that was how the plan originated. After I left the copies on the shelves, I would stop by periodically to see if anyone took them home. Inspecting if the binding or pages were creased. More often than not the copies were still there untouched. It was at that very moment I decided that my next book would have Missy on the cover. That way it would be irresistible. Wait! Even better…
“Missy my next book will be about you.”
“What do you mean?” She seemed creeped out and flattered at the same time.
“I mean… I don’t know you yet, but the feelings you evoke in me are enough to fill an entire book.”
“A poem maybe. An epic poem full of exaggerations.”
“At least a novella full of truths, but when you go that far, you might as well keep going.”
“Sounds like a mystery.”
“Yeah a mystery about you Missy.”
“If you write it, I’ll read it.” Missy tried to read the book’s title in my hand, but I was careful to shield it.
Of course the bookstore was no longer. Now we had little choice, but to stare emptily at the banker in the ceiling high window
“Fish in a tank.” Kiko was thorough with her due diligence.
“Don’t make eye-contact or…” A streetlady covered in lesions grumbled, picking half a burning cigarette off the cement before making her way for the nearest alley. It was too late for us all. The banker exited the fishbowl, adjusting to the natural light.
“Do you have an account with us?”
“What happened to the bookstore?” Kiko dwelled within rage.
“What do you mean?”
“There was a great bookstore here.” I explained to him, but it didn’t register.
“Our bank has more branches than any other financial institution in the world. There’s one every two and three-quarter blocks and what’s even better is…” His voice trailed off only when we managed to put enough distance between us.
{XXVI}
“ABSURD
HOW SOMEBODY CAN TAKE credit for something as large as finding the new world.” Kiko was staring up at the monument in Columbus Circle as if she was watching a fleet of ships enter the harbor.
“Nobody finds a new world alone.” Pitch black night dissolves into the foggy glow of midtown. Somehow my little girl would have to lead me to her. I didn’t know where to start. The world felt huge and we were just ants on the steps of a marble tomb.
“Don’t take it the wrong way Farrow, but Hawaii’s story sounds like bullshit. I’m not sure any of this even happened.” Fountains percussively pour onto marble. Skaters grind their trucks and slide their tails. Strollers roll and nannies squawk.
“It’s overwhelming.” The fountains paused for a brief silence.
The vase shattered. Roses and shards of glass all over the floor. Missy swung what was left of it at me. The top, uneven and jagged. She hadn’t committed to doing any real harm with the first few swings. Just trying to back me off into the bottomless pit.
“Missy there’s a baby inside you.” I held my ground. Hands up defensively.
“You do this to me.”
“This fucking weather…” Shoes off in the shallow fountain, Kiko read me up and down. Cyanide in my eyes, I wanted to believe it was true. I couldn’t believe anything, but.
“Whether it’s true or not, you don’t have to do anything.”
“Just the fact that it may be true...” Nobody handed me a tissue for my tears. Their faces were all glowing in their electronic tablets. The world around them muted and sonically replaced by pairs upon pairs of ear bud headphones.
“That’s the upgrade. Can I see…” Kiko charmed a tablet into her hands. The scruffy techie was initially reluctant, but too disembodied in possession to fight back. He pulled at it a few times turned off by the physical action, fidgeting impatiently.
“Take it easy! I won’t drop your baby.” And she started reading. By the way the words seized her eyes, I knew it was necromancy. Kiko mouthed the unreal into the absurd and then she just came out with it. “Farrow, you won’t believe this.”
“Lars.” The lucky bastard’s writing was never hard to find. If someone was reading something - anything - my first guess was that Wildman channeled it. The arcane beauty was the fact that Lars fell frenzy to the same mystic voice that we all did.
“It’s good Farrow. It may be his best yet.” Kiko wisely chose to stay in the netherworld.
The techie made a grab for the tablet forcing Kiko to take off through the fountains. I stood at the steps of the monument watching them circle around me.
“It’s not waterproof.” The techie mutated ablaze with anger. Wrath got the better of him. His screams vehemently rose to the peak of the Time Warner Center. Fearing for her life, Kiko tugged her weight up the stone angel’s body, grasping the globe while waving the tablet.
“I’m a fast reader.” Kiko pleaded while climbing the vine of brass reliefs, naming each ship as she fought her way up to Cristoforo’s granite shoes. “Nina…Pinta…Santa Maria.” Kiko hugged the totem pole. Her legs seemed strong enough to straddle an ancient pharaoh for a thousand hours as mother earth got slurped up by metafictional quicksand.
“Kiko is it the same as his other stuff or did Lars finally transce…?” I had to know if it was possible, but she wouldn’t tell me. Her eyes popped from their sockets. Her body language had to mean something, but I couldn’t settle on what. A bit of drool dropped down on the techie’s feathered fedora.
“Kiko. Kiko.” Her ears just didn’t wanna hear me. The best way for the techie to deal with his loss was to blame it on yours truly. Forsaken blue marble burnt through my soul. I started climbing Columbus reaching for Kiko’s flexing pasty thighs. Up and over the grey angel with the matching planet tugging down on her robe. As I was making it to the top, Kiko was already on her way down. We passed each other in silence similar to what we shared in the Rockaway sand with bullets flying over our heads. I didn’t watch Kiko hit the ground, but I could hear that her footsteps weren’t only hers. Every step was as much Percy’s, Gloom’s, Lars’s, or even Missy’s. A lion’s feet sounds the same, whether tearing through Columbus Circle, Queens Boulevard, or Calvary Cemetery.
{XXVII}
THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN being alone: Is to never be alone. Columbus Circle lit up with squad cars, firetrucks, and ambulances. I hung on for life at the top of the sculptor’s solid nationalist erection.
“Get off of me!” A Taino spirit was screaming at Columbus.
“I never liked Percy.” Missy admitted rubbing my back in an attempt to coax some sort of agreement out of me.
“Uh.” I said. It wasn’t uh-huh or uh-no. Nothing more than the slight recognition that I heard what she said: The grunt of a caveman that spent his life painting on walls while society was off on their hunt.
“Asshole what’s your name?” An officer was already on the megaphone.
“People usually call me Farrow.”
“The sociopath? The writer?”
“Yeah?” Nobody clapped. I kept waiting, just in case.
“Everybody move away from the area.” The police got organized, pushing people off to the side, but there was nowhere to go. They just all stood around circling the fountain: Staring up at the crackpot writer, drinking their cocoaccinos, yapping on their plastic phones. Cars honking. Sirens whirling. Lips smacking.
“I’m coming down.” My grip was slipping. The drop was enough to maim me, but probably wouldn’t do me in. Lars had to be paying detailed attention from the other realm. Most likely he wrote this scene sipping on milk from a goddess’s breast while scarfing down tarts filled with ambrosia.
“Sir, don’t move. Stay right where you are.”
“Help me.” Not even the three steel boats could stop the slide. I hit each one with an ascending grunt missing NYPD’s finest trampoline by a couple feet. Concrete I knew better than dirt. Somewhere along the line I learned the right way to take a fall.
{XXVIII}
“KEEP THE ICE ON YOUR head.” A woman was leaning over me with an ice pack. Her voice was a honey sweet purr that could reveal the most sadistic crimes against humanity as nothing more than nature’s empty-headiness. Her voluptuousness threatened to escape the trappings of her white blouse and formal skirt.
“What happened?”
“You fell off the Columbus monument.” She steadied herself in brown boots with matching big brown eyes kept growing until she swallowed me with her smile.
“From the top?”
“No from the bottom, but you didn’t land right.”
“Everybody died.”
“Nobody died.”
“Not even me?”
“No. Not yet.”
“…hmmm…” My mind was always deserting me. I was always falling. It couldn’t be healthy, but I wasn’t the only one. People were dropping all over. Their markets were crashing. Their parachutes weren’t opening. They were listening to mp3s instead of the cab blowing the red light. They were reading the pill bottles upside down and forgetting how to wake up. They were telling the guy jabbing their spine with the pistol to “Fuck off.” Giving up minutes before the grim reaper realized she couldn’t hold it in any longer and had to piss on everything in sight.
“Are you Michele Giacomo Aurelio Faro?” A smooth diversion. It sounded too official. A funny way for a girl with such heaving boobs to talk. She pronounced the Italian name with a Medellin accent, but it felt nice to have another identity. So close, yet so far from my penname.
“Yeah by birth, but I go by Mikey or Farrow, that’s what most people seem to call me.”
“I’ve been seeking you out. I’m Adelora Rosario, Mr. Wildman’s lawyer and the executor of his estate. Mr. Wildman wanted me to contact you immediately.” Adelora stayed a whispers distance from me. I suspected the good news only lingered to soften me up for the creeping horrors.
“You’re a lawyer?”
“Yes. I’m here as a provision of his will. Lars inherited Fea
therton publishing from his father and in turn left it to you. He told me that he could forsee his own demise.”
“Ahh… yes… demise.” I gargled, spitting up the East River. Veins overflowed ink. Ears whirled in an empirical pool of psychosis. Heart gushed ocular. The city emptied, snorting the entire stash of sewer steam until it was frozen wasteland falling back into its own echo.
{XXIX}
A DRAPE OF SILENCE DESCENDED upon us. There was more she wanted to divulge. Adelora stopped traffic leading me across Central Park South into the lobby of a time portal to a classier era.
“Miss Rosario you have a package.” The porter couldn’t help, but be pleased to see her.
“Oh I do Diego?”
Adelora balanced the package between her melons, jabbing at the translucent circle until the elevator light lit up. She seemed to be going through a to-do list in her mind.
“There used to be an elevator guy, but the building’s cutting back lately. Touch economic waters we’re wading through.” Adelora mumbled dressed in a hodge-podge of Dior, D&G, and Yamamoto.
“I wade through them regardless. Once you get used to it.”
“Don’t get too used to it. Already slipped your mind what you inherited?”
“A punji pit of paperwork. I don’t forsee myself sitting in the boardroom anytime soon.”
“With that attitude it’s hard to believe you didn’t experience success much sooner.” Adelora rolled her eyes at me as the elevator opened to an empty hallway. Once again balancing the package in her bosom, she fished a magnetic card key out of her purse, and unlocked the door. The apartment door opened to a breathtaking southern view of Central Park and a minimalist modern décor.
Lust Demented Page 6
