A giant monogrammed Louis Vuitton duffle bag led to the stench of a million or so in cash that was stashed away dreaming with the rats and roaches. Kuroneko stared at Kiko hoping she could psychically guide her mind to a more narcissistic scheme.
{XXXIX}
HOPPING ONTO THE MOPED, KURONEKO pulled up the back of her reformatory school skirt to flash me a little fur.
“Forget something?” I tied and twisted the leather strap of the overloaded bag around my arm several times, settling in behind her.
“Don’t worry Farrow I won’t be the only naked pussy on the road.” The bike kicked as we blasted out of the alley, her skirt fluttering up and down, teasing the cars beside us with the powder white lines of her thighs. From what I understood the plan was to wave the money in front of Hawaii’s nose until she gave up Missy’s location. Nobody said much about it. It was hard to believe the girls would risk losing that kind of money, but Kiko was calling the shots and by some crazy fortune: I fell into her palm
Streaks of reckless acceleration through the sunshower, Kuroneko took her hands from the handlebars one at a time, grabbing mine, and sliding them below her skirt. Her hips were familiar territory.
“Hold my purse. Don’t let go.” Kuroneko slid a little, repositioning and I squeezed tight enough to make her body jerk.
“Find some honesty in the world you created.” Kuroneko leaned back on me as Queensboro Plaza closed in on us.
“If money was my thing…” Rusty limbs on the scratch paper sky.
“If money was your thing you could take off running.”
“But I won’t.”
“And that’s why I suspect you’re a slow runner.”
“Farrow something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“I mean with my body. I can’t stop coming.” Missy was crying and laughing at the same time. “It feels good, but I’m scared. I’m scared to feel so good.”
Voodoo drums in the rainforest, the wheels were still spinning when I hopped off the moped. I could hear Kuroneko quickly pull over and drop the bike. I didn’t look back, but an image of her stressed out greedy face cracked me up as I sprinted up the stairs leading to the elevated station. The crowd got thick in the tunnel bridge. No room to run. Kuroneko blatantly tugged at the bag like a gypsy pickpocket in front of a tour bus. We moved prehistoric, mostly with shoulders and hips. Way beyond the imagination of the everyday suckers caught up in their daily struggle, they were all getting smacked with a million in cash without knowing it.
{XL}
SKYLINE AT OUR BACKS, THE platform was shaking. All the trains were coming in at the same time. The sun cut through our eyelids. I didn’t realize until I bent over…
Missy fainted here. Smashed her skull on the concrete with a hollow thud. She had a slight seizure. Blood ran from her head like a kicked over bucket of red paint. I begged for someone to get an ambulance. In the back I knew every answer to the paramedics questions. At the emergency room I got the third degree. They assumed I knocked her out. I waited in the lobby for six hours. They finally let me see her, minutes before she was released. She was talking on the phone to somebody. I didn’t know she had her phone with her. I tried calling it several times from the waiting room, but just got the voicemail.
“I’ll try Percy. I’ll try.” She whispered in a soft voice that I pretended not to hear.
“Money Farrow. Money.” I followed the pasty legs up to the short shorts until I was damn sure it was Hawaii.
“This is my little girl we’re talking about.” I was screaming at Hawaii. Studying her neck to know just where I would place my thumbs, if it came to that.
“Chill Farrow chill.” Kuroneko patted down her face with a handkerchief, trying not to let the sweat mix with the thin layer of powder. Everyone else around us tried not to act shocked, but it was bothering them. Like it or not, we were packed together. The exhausted workers in their dirty clothes scrunched up at the sound of a man lashing a woman in broad daylight. The words “money” and “little girl” hung in the air. A spray that everyone could understand. A mist that transforms a situation into a disaster. A grumbling that elevates a disaster into a tragedy. A hoard of rats started rising from the tracks. They seemed bothered. Like they knew something we didn’t. Just as the family dog can smell the storm before the first drop hits.
“Farrow I’m sorry. Farrow I know.”
“What do you know?”
Kuroneko took off running. Of course she did. Hawaii went next. And I was standing there staring at the faces of strangers as the possibilities faded. Fuck that, like hell I was.
{XLI}
SCREAMS OF AWE AND HORROR, Kuroneko’s feet hit the open tracks completely blowing minds. She ran so hard with her skirt stuck up in the back, ass exposed, pushing her body to the limit like an angel-dusted thoroughbred. The crazy powder white mare with the black mane took the curve towards Astoria trying to make it to 39th Ave before the next N or Q to Manhattan. It was a fucked up gamble.
Kill the brain. I wanted to throw up a lifetime of meals when my feet hit the stilted tracks. Mandatory perfection found its infancy. Every step of the sprint had to bless the slats. I heard Hawaii’s voice yell back, “Farrow focus.”
Kuroneko already made her way around the curve leaving the plaza. Northern turned into 31st Street. It was a straight shot to the next station. A few blocks away.
“Faster.” Hawaii panted, frozen with fear. Another train heading into the city chugged dead into us. It was rare to get two so close back to back. It just wasn’t our day.
Anyone could turn spider for the right price. First in line to get smacked, Kuroneko chanced it dangling her body over the street as the train passed. Demonically possessed she prepared herself to drop in Lucifer’s palm. The sight of her exposed caused the nauseating heights to grab hold of me.
Smell the sparks, the conductor hit the brakes. Somehow Hawaii was now in front of me, scrunched up, holding her hand outstretched as if trying to block a bright light from her eyes. She pivoted back at me with a look of regret, panting, frozen with fear.
“It was me.” Mangled, Hawaii’s face lost its form as the squealing steel burst in with remorseless momentum. Splashed by an exploding balloon of blood. The train came to a halt. Inches. Milliseconds. I could stick my tongue out and lick it.
“It’s alright Farrow. Whenever I lose something, it’s impossible for me to believe I’d truly get it back. I’m cool with it. Once something’s gone. It’s gone.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. Missy…Missy…”
Close enough to see over the border to the afterlife, Kuroneko methodically pulled her body back on the tracks. Unscathed, she didn’t have time to think about what just happened, hustling off to the next station. Awe struck as I watched her pull herself up onto the platform at 39th Avenue. The reckless cat calmly adjusted the bag of cash on her shoulder, walking off down the street as if she just picked up a bag of Sunday bagels.
{XLII}
“DON’T LET HER GET AWAY.” My words were muffled. Detective Anderson was wiping Hawaii’s blood off my face with my own shirt. The heavy summer air stuck to my bare chest. I felt covered in omnipotent honey. Stuck in a beehive with the bees stinging everyone, but me. They knew I was watching. They liked it that way.
“You live in a fucking dream world Farrow. I’m going get your head checked out. Cunt dropped like a penny from the Empire State Building.” Sgt. Bethany Powers flew up in my face.
“More like a silver dollar. Monsters always leave a big mess.” Detective Anderson kicked back filling out the tag team.
“I’m sorry about Hawaii. Had nothing against her, but maybe you did?”
“I thought you guys know everything.”
“We know Missy’s in mainland China and she didn’t leave with a baby. Crossed the border on her lonesome, under the name Eun Young.”
“Wait what... no baby?” Detective Anderson’s words hit me as a decaying hum.
Smoke through her nose. Cigarette dangling from her mouth. Missy was always destroying pages. I shouldn’t have left them around to curl up and turn to ash.
“You don’t want me to finish.”
“You can’t finish. Everything you start blossoms into life, then slowly gets sick.” It was a few straight weeks of insults. It wasn’t like this in the beginning. My girlfriend was fucking another man to help get my book published and she was the one that was insecure. There was nothing to do, but ignore her and that of course was why the snakes rolled around in their pit biting at the air.
“Seoul. Farrow, don’t tell me you never thought about it.”
“Missy overstayed her visa by six years. What did you expect to run into her sunning in Sheep’s Meadow?”
Another woman’s arms were around me. Sgt. Bethany Powers’ eyes blasted lasers. Adelora’s opals deflected them into the crooked cop’s screw face.
“Officers please give me a moment with my client, Mr. Faro.” Adelora wrapped me up in her serenity, leading me away.
“Watch out Chica. Guy’s born under a bad sign.” Sgt. Bethany Powers unsnapped the cover on her holster and anxiously resnapped it several times.
“We’re bored of him already.” Detective Anderson touched his tongue to his upper lip, eyeing Adelora.
Adelora shook the envelope in her hands. She was having a conversation with herself inside her own head. Both Anderson’s and Powers’ eyes weighed down on us as we walked away. Soon enough their feet would most likely follow their eyes. The tracks overhead started shaking again. The first trains since the accident approached the plaza. Adelora glanced back to see if they were still behind us. I could tell by her face that they were. She seemed to go over it a little longer.
“You know I was sitting at home with this envelope in my hands and all I could think of was my father. What it would be like if we didn’t meet for the first time at his gravestone.” Adelora nonchalantly slid through an opening in the fence and hopped down onto an embankment dropping steeply into the Sunnyside Yards. I followed in the same fashion beachkids jump from the boardwalk, hit the sand, and race to the sea.
“I always dreamed that my dad would bring me to the circus. I dreamed he would walk across the tightrope with me.” Rocks and overgrown weeds, we walked down a lonely abandoned rail line caught in the tangle of dozens others that were ready for action. We didn’t have to look back to remember our abandoned overgrown shadows.
{XLIII}
THE ENVELOPE WAS THIN AND could only hold paper. It had an address on it...
Missy Featherton
219 Madison Street Apt 5E
NY, NY 10002
I didn’t think Adelora knew how hard she was chewing on the bottom of her lip as I carefully peeled the envelope open. The sight inside gave me chills. I looked back at Sgt. Bethany Powers. She was moving in on me with the baton.
“Get on the ground Farrow. Let us take a look at that.” Detective Anderson pulled his gun on me for the first time. I dropped to the ground staring up at a spiderweb of high voltage cables and the first royalty check I’d ever seen or held. It was made out to Missy Featherton for A Greater Truth.
“These cops have something against you?” Adelora lay next to me, anxious and twitching. Ignoring her, I chewed the envelope to pieces careful to keep the address engrained in my head. I started next on the paystub, but Sgt. Bethany Powers jammed the thick baton between my teeth before I got half of it down. Detective Anderson shoved his fingers in my mouth to pull out what was left.
“Got anything Anderson?”
“Only scraps. Fucking animal devoured it.” Detective Anderson nonchalantly palmed the address. Arms twisted behind me, cuffs clicked on my wrists.
“We’re bringing you in. Destruction of evidence.”
“Where is she Farrow? Spit it out and we’ll let you go.”
“Tell us and we’ll race you there.”
“We know you know. Don’t waste our time.”
The sun stayed in our faces. The air just kind of hung there. Adelora was breathing heavily. I could tell she was trying to calm herself down, but it backfired. I tried to grab her hand, but she pushed it away. This wasn’t a courtroom. Nobody even pretended there were rules out here. Then there was a long silence. The kind that could only be followed by brutal violence. Gun butts, boots, batons, and fists. The two detectives did what they had to do to get the truth. Years of practice and training. Sgt. Bethany Powers kicked Adelora so hard, her boot shot out into the open air. The black thigh high soared towards me. Maybe I could’ve ducked in time. Maybe I just had to know how the black leather felt against my skin.
{XLIV}
MISSY POPPED OUT FROM BEHIND the door startling me. She had sliced cucumbers stuck to her face. Uninhibited, she was laughing the way most people can only laugh in the company of family. People you’ve known your whole life. People that will put up with you and even more stand behind you, blindly.
“Farrow let me put them on you too.”
“It’s okay… you enjoy… I’m cool…”
“Get over here.” Missy grabbed me, wiping the cucumber paste off her face, and smearing it on mine.
Fading back onto the planet below the steel skeleton of the Williamsburg Bridge, I woke up aching in Adelora’s warm lap. The lawyer had a bruised forehead and two determined bloodshot black eyes that no one in their right mind would contest. It hurt me to see her that way. I wish my beating was enough, but the shields couldn’t help, but double their pleasure. We spilled onto Delancey. Two pairs of eyes watched us in the same little mirror. Grinding their teeth. Wrinkling their tense faces. They were at another career moment. Wondering if they were showing up to a raging pulse or melting block of ice. The traffic was the same as always, but their minds had no space left for patience. Sgt. Bethany Powers leaned down and put the portable siren on the dash, driving over the median, and the wrong way down Norfolk Street. Something hit the side window.
“Sounded like a pebble.” Sgt. Bethany Powers pounded the gas. I looked up imagining the shadowy kids on the top of the tower across from the temple. They were all out of fresh piss for the unmarked cars. Instead a shower of stones followed by bricks and bottles. Broken glass fell on us like icy windblown ashes from Thor’s coolie. Die machine.
“Go Farrow go.” Adelora hoisted me with her legs, out back window. I hit the pavement with a bone-jarring thud, sinking into a quicksand mattress.
{XLV}
A BEATEN BODY IN PAIN. Almost past Grand. Didn’t remember getting back on my feet. I felt my teeth sharpen. Eyes zoom microscopic. A straight shot in the dark through Seward Park. No sign of the heat on my back. Maybe my favorite cops were finally out of commission. Down for the count.
“Special olympics ain’t ’til next month.” Mayor’s orders, a patrolman let loose an innocent fart. No chance I would hang around to grab a whiff. Still it followed me through the trees and sprayshowers, marking his spot with his scent.
A block or so to go. Jefferson Street. A crafty skel in the shadows takes an interest my cuffs. His lip was swollen retarded. His shirt was stretched down exposing a shoulder.
“You didn’t see anything.” The mural glowed beside us.
“… give a shit…” He had cuffs of his own.
Turn the corner. Madison Street. The numbers are going down. Less than a block to go. Paralysis enacts its ploy for mental siege. Recognizable voices begin to harmonize nefariously. Distinct pin-dots of light grow together to form a forgotten smudge on the city’s canvas. Illuminated, the somber streets between the bridges seemed to grow fuzzy.
Kids on the stoop, parents off finding new adventures. 219 Madison Street. Missy’s breathing above it all. The towers exploding from across the river. The jet engine shaking the island bungalows. The jungle lioness waking up to find a metropolis planted on top of her tail.
I’m staring at a red door.
“Our first date, huh…” Missy whispered through the coming attractions at the Zi
egfield.
“Missy, I didn’t think you’d show up.”
“Farrow. I’m sorry. Don’t put that in your book.” Missy smiled teasing me.
“What?”
“That I’m always late.”
“Oh you remembered that I write. Don’t worry beauty is always worth waiting for.”
“I respect that about you.” It was the only time she said that. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the writing or the waiting.
{XLVI}
FIGHT THE MEMORIES. A FADED crimson cage of thin iron to keep out yesterday’s demons. Slide through the crack, propped open with a cement block and a jade statue of Buddha. The dim bulbs in the hallway lamps didn’t seem to get enough power. Floors and walls trapped in time. The old door shut at my back killing the street.
“Chiara.” I whispered to myself. Stomach in my throat, trudging up the timeworn stairs. Senses pushed beyond their peaks. Infantile whines and wails. Cantonese and Spanish resonated through the walls. The building was panting.
Each step taken was to be totally absorbed by the floor. Creaks kept to a minimum. Apt 5E was at the top of the walk-up facing the street. A pair of black leather boots were jammed in the door to keep it open. She was waiting for me.
Immediate sweat covered my forehead. The brick oven was filled with tenement ghosts that life painted over. The overhead lights were off. Large candles burnt a third down were placed haphazardly. The flames were trying to escape the wax, but the breeze cutting through the windows wasn’t strong enough. A large claw foot bathtub was arm’s distance from the stove and small dinner table. Terrible orange linoleum tiles with brown diamonds blighted the kitchen. There were two other small narrow rooms lined up in a rectangle. It was the type of place that would always be dirty. The apartment was missing furniture. It didn’t appear to be a place that was recently lived in.
Lust Demented Page 9
