by Julia Slavin
“Like what?” Beauty wished she could get in the back seat with Stan.
“Oh, semiprecious stones, keepsakes. They say out at Rudy’s farm a strand of pearls materialized on a chair.”
“Are there going to be any drugs there?” Beauty cradled the bright blue nitrous tank in her lap. “’Cause I got to get off the N, Gil. The N’s making me dotty. My brain’s ba-booming around in my bean like a cat in the dryer.”
“Have I ever seared you wrong, Beauty?”
“Steered, idiot. S-T-E-E-R-E-D.”
What a tiny delicate jewel she was: five feet tall and everybody wanted to touch her. Her mother thought she should be on TV and arranged a job doing the ads for Big Bob’s Bad Boy Toyota and Used. Beauty the Big Bob Girl was how she was known around Hollywood, Florida. Big Bob said he’d do anything to sell you a car. But it was Beauty who shot out of the cannon, kissed the monkey, and flew on top of the airplane. Beauty told Big Bob that if he ever exposed himself to her again she’d go to the Consumer Protection Agency about the rolled-back mileage on some of those used cars. But Big Bob couldn’t resist apple cheeks, apple breasts, an apple bottom. And so, after ransacking the back office, Beauty accepted Gil’s invitation north, where he promised to siphon off her blues.
“This is it?” Beauty rifled through the box of groceries Stan and Gil brought out from the Buck ’n’ Dough. “This is all you got?”
“That and this.” Gil showed her the contents of the Buck ’n’ Dough cash register.
“I can’t eat any of this.”
“There’s lots of good stuff. Snowballs, Ho Ho’s, Vienna sausage, soup.” Gil opened a can of Chicken & Stars.
“How’re we supposed to heat it up?”
Gil bent back his neck and poured the can of Chicken & Stars in his mouth. First in was the broth, flecked with solidified chicken fat; then came the stars, which slipped out of the can in one gelatinous disk and blopped in his mouth, splattering soup all over the windshield.
“I hate you. I wish you were dead.” Beauty kicked her foot through the glove compartment.
Gil unwound the hose of the nitrous tank, forced Beauty’s head down, pried open her jaw, plunged the end of the hose in her mouth, and made her suck tank until she slumped down in the seat, happy.
“There’s no pleasing that woman, Stanley,” Gil said, opening a can of Bean with Bacon, “no matter how I try. I tell her about the pyramids, semiotics. All she wants to do is bang. Consider yourself lucky.”
Stan lit a new Old Gold from an old one and finished picking out the coupons from the Old Gold cartons they took from the Buck ’n’ Dough. He was only seven thousand coupons away from the Winnebago. Gil had no idea just how lucky Stan was.
Proceeding without knowing the direction, the travelers chanced upon the ferry that took them across the choppy sound and around the curvy roads of Firefly Island. Arriving at Rudy’s farm, Beauty saw rows and rows of fruit trees and life-size statues the color of human flesh with green-painted genitals. On closer examination, Beauty saw that they weren’t statues at all but guests of the farm, involved in various forms of free love and tai chi. One couple was in a position that Beauty used to laugh at before she met Gil.
When Beauty, Gil, and Stan stepped out of the Impala, some mischievous goats tried to butt them back in. Beauty screamed and held on tightly to the nitrous tank; the goats bah-h-hhed with delight. But then the sky darkened and the goats ran away. Across the farm a man came walking, a man so frightful to look at the travelers were ready to faint with fear. Was it a man? It had the shape of a man but the skin of a beast. Tufts of hair grew here and there on its back, front, and head through thick grafts of skin and scar tissue. Beauty could see that half its face was extraordinarily handsome. But the other half was buried in a zigzag of scars. Its chest was as scarred as its face, and its back was as scarred as its front. Beauty knew if she blew chunks now, she’d blow and she’d blow and she’d blow herself inside out.
Rudy walked right up to her. They always know, Beauty thought.
“Scared?” the beast said in its terrible voice.
“No.” She started to feel her saliva thin, preparing her mouth for regurgitated Burger King.
“Touch it,” Rudy said.
Trying to hide her fear, Beauty touched its chest with her finger.
“Youch!” Rudy recoiled like her finger was a red-hot shish kebab skewer. Then he laughed and slapped five with the men, and the goats came out from behind the trees to butt the guests, and the sky brightened. Beauty kecked Whopper on Gil’s shoes.
“Don’t let that scaly old beast bother you,” Linda, a nice woman in lots of Hindu print clothing, said. “He’s got a good heart.” Linda held Beauty’s head in her lap and stroked her hair and gave her parsley tea for the nausea.
“Stan and I are gettin’ off the N,” Beauty said, happy to have some female companionship. “Really. I’m gonna suck this tank and then we’re definitely gettin’ off.”
“Shh,” Linda said.
All around her, people spoke of nothing but Rudy. Beauty heard snippets as she fell in and out of consciousness.
“… a firebomb in Greenwich Village. Rudy was trapped in the basement for two days.”
“… lit himself on fire to protest the war.”
“… used to wear an Indian peace symbol …”
“… Nepalese temple balls around his neck …”
“… the search party who found him said they …”
“… glowed red like liquid steel.”
Beauty dreamed she was a player token in the game of Mystery Date, moving door-to-door looking for the Guy in the Dinner Jacket. But behind every door was the Dud. But then she realized the Dud was the most handsome of all the dates. Surely the Dud was Stan, Beauty thought.
Beauty skipped through the orchard because Stan loved her. She picked an apple but it was wormy so she dropped it.
“The Koran said it was a banana,” Rudy said.
Beauty was startled by his unexpected appearance in a tree.
“What?” she asked.
Rudy disappeared from the tree and appeared standing in front of her. “The forbidden fruit. The Koran said it was a banana.” She tried not to look at his scars but couldn’t help it. “I lit myself on fire,” he said. Beauty thought she’d faint. Rudy laughed that she believed him. “I was a lucky Pinto owner,” he explained. “I bought this farm with the settlement money. Are you all right?” He touched her arm. She slid away. “Why do you shudder when I come near you?”
“I don’t,” she said.
“I like physical closeness.” He moved closer. She could feel his horrible breath on her face and her saliva thinning again in her mouth.
“How come you’re not astral projecting with the others?” she asked, and stepped sideways.
“Because I think it’s a crock,” Rudy said.
“They say a strand of pearls materialized on a chair.”
“I put them there.”
“I have to get back.”
“To Gil?” Rudy asked. “Or is it Stan?” Beauty was speechless. “Don’t be misled by appearances, Beauty.”
“You don’t know them,” she said.
“I know you,” he whispered.
“They say you had sex with a dog.”
“I loved her,” Rudy said, and disappeared before her eyes.
“Hook ’im, cook ’im,” Gil said. “The Cinder. I’m tired of moving around. I want the farm.”
“I’m not hookin’ the Cinder,” Beauty said.
“Why not?” Gil said.
“Because it’ll make me sick. And I’m not gonna cook.”
“Fine,” Gil said. “You hook, Stan’ll cook.”
“Why do I gotta hook at all? Why can’t you just cook without the hook?”
“’Cause he’s sneaky, the Cinder. Got eyes all over his body. And he likes you.”
Beauty hoped Gil would die soon.
Beauty was startled by the sudden appearance of
Rudy by the pond. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Going for a swim,” he said, naked. Beauty looked around for Stan, to see if he was waiting in the woods for the cook. “Coming?” Rudy asked. Beauty pretended to be shy about taking off her clothes. “Dang,” Rudy said. “You debs from the South.”
“I’m not from the South,” Beauty said. “I’m from Florida.” Peeking, Beauty noticed the part of Rudy that had been spared the Pinto explosion. “And besides, it’s freezing. Aren’t you freezing?”
“Scar tissue doesn’t get cold. Feel it.” He took her hand. She pulled away. He laughed.
“You’re always trying to scare me,” Beauty said. “But I’m not afraid of you, Rudy. I walk under an umbrella of protection, the love of the man I love: Stan. You shouldn’t laugh at people, and you shouldn’t try to scare people. It isn’t nice.” Beauty surprised herself as much as Rudy.
And then Rudy didn’t look scary anymore. He started to cry, big acid tears that burned through the earth and dripped out over the Seychelle Islands and landed on the bald spot of the British explorer Sir Peregine Pomsomby-Smythe’s head. “Bleedin’ birds,” Peregine said.
“I know I do things that scare people,” Rudy cried. “And I act superior, but I can’t help it. The physical pain left over from the accident makes me irritable, and people expect to be afraid of me so I give them what they want. If I don’t, they’ll stop coming and then I’ll have no one.”
Rudy cried and cried, and more tears burned through the earth.
“You know,” Rudy said, wiping his eyes with an asbestos mitt, “I used to be a pretty good-looking guy.”
“You’re still—”
“Don’t give me false compliments, Beauty. I hate them. I’m deformed and hideous.”
“You’re not so bad,” Beauty said. “Why, with the right hairstyle …” She wet her fingers and tried to smooth down his hair, but no matter how much saliva she greased on his head, the hairs popped back up like inflatable-clown toys.
“Could you ever love me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Is my company so contemptible?”
“Oh, no.”
“Try?” He unzipped her cutoffs.
“I-I-I,” she said, “I’m not into this.”
“Get into it,” he said. “Get into me.” He pulled off her cutoffs and knelt at her feet.
It’s a shame, she thought, that he is so ugly, for he is so good.
“I don’t see why you had to kill him,” Beauty said.
Stan had run a chef’s knife through Gil’s ear. The first knife had done little, and he’d had to run another through Gil’s other ear. Gil was in the process of an out-of-body experience when he saw two chef’s knives sticking out of his head. “Guess I ain’t coming back,” Gil said.
Everything was better with Stan. Gil had stuck it in, shot off, and didn’t go south. Stan could dry-hump for hours and ate Beauty like filet. Gil yacked and yacked: “I invented the bacon cheeseburger, you know. At Smiley’s on Route Four. I said, Smiley, throw some bacon on that burger, and so it was.” Gil thought he was funny: “I believe in parallel universes, and in one of them are your missing car keys.” Stan was a mute. But now that Gil was gone, everything seemed different. Too tired to raise her pelvis to meet Stan’s anymore after a three-hour dry hump, Beauty went to sleep and had a nitrous dream that she was a Chinese man rowing a boat through the bloodstream of a Chinese man rowing a boat through the bloodstream of a Chinese man rowing a boat through the bloodstream of a Chinese man rowing a boat.
“Here’s what you’re looking at, Toots,” Detective Mallory said. “You got your two consecutive life sentences for the murders of Robert Buck Brown aka Big Bob and the unidentifiable owner of a ’64-model maraschino Impala, and you got your big three-0 for conspiracy. Capisce?”
“I’m telling you I don’t know where Stan is,” Beauty cried.
“Look, Honey Pot.” Mallory’s voice became gentle. “I got a gift set of six ginsus with two unaccounted for. If you’re trying to harbor this Stan character, keep it in your toboggan [he meant noggin] he doesn’t give a rat’s hooey for you.”
Beauty’s mouth formed an upside-down crescent moon, and she cried so hard no sound came out.
Mallory rubbed his face. Time was when he knew every license plate on the rock. Trouble? He could seal the place—stop the ferries, the barges, nobody comes or goes—with a phone call. But since these Rudy people came, the rock was an open sore, wide open for any two-bit pathogenic opportunistic infection to pus up. It was the Rudy people who burned his house while he was off playing a clown for the brats at the policemen’s benevolence picnic. All he owned now was what he had on his back. The big ruffled collar made his neck itch.
“Somebody’s got to answer for Gil,” he whispered, and lit an exploding cigar.
Beauty looked up at the ceiling of the barn. There must have been a hundred thousand fireflies up there, oxidizing and glowing, oxidizing and glowing. Luciferin. Heatless light. They use it to attract one another. Rudy taught her that. She remembered how she used to collect them in a jar when she was a little girl and let them go in her room. They’d be dead in the morning.
“No,” Rudy said, entering her. “Just sleeping; they’re nocturnal.” Beauty hated it when he read her mind without asking. She hated the sweat between his scales, the way he’d be nice to animals and then eat them, that he had to have sex every seven minutes. She was starting to miss Stan again. Even Gil, a little bit.
“Hold your horses, I’ll get them,” Rudy said, climbing the ladder to the loft of the barn.
“Get what?”
“You were about to say, You stupid idiot, get me my Seconals.”
“I was not.”
“You were too.”
Beauty wished he’d shut up and die.
“You shut up,” Rudy said.
“You shut up, you stupid idiot, and get me my Seconals.”
Rudy stood at the top of the loft with a fresh erection and threw down the bottle of Seconals. Beauty held up her hand and squeezed it shut, hoping the bottle would end up there, but it landed in the hay and opened and the little pills rolled into the abyss. Beauty started to cry.
“I wish you were dead,” she cried, over and over, pounding the hay with her fists.
Rudy took her in his arms and kissed her face.
“There, there, don’t cry, Beauty. Isn’t this better than jail? You saw that Linda Blair movie. Say, how ’bout I go to the dentist for a fresh tank? Would that make it better?”
Beauty nodded, put her arms around him, and kissed the Jupiter brand on his chest for luck. She felt better.
“Now,” Rudy said. “How ’bout that blow job?”
“Get out! Get out! Get out!” Beauty screamed.
Dang, that woman gets mad faster than any woman I’ve ever seen, Rudy thought, as he walked into the warm sunshine looking for his favorite goat. Must be the macrobiotic diet she put herself on. “Seen Timmy?” he asked a steer. The steer tilted his head in the direction of the sugar house. Come to think of it, the whole last millennium together had been a bitch.
Rare Is a Cold Red Center
There’s a girl who comes in the restaurant Thursdays and Fridays, and if I’m lucky the hostess will put her where I can look at her face. She comes to the salad bar, which is a horseshoe around the grill, gets her lettuce, some chick peas, purple onion, and dressing. Creamy vinaigrette. She’s slow through the line and people get impatient. But that’s one thing I like about her. She’s careful with the food.
She wears short-sleeve sweaters, which I don’t understand. You wear a sweater to keep warm but then your arms are left out in the cold. Sometimes she wears a yellow one, which is fuzzy and pieces of it come off in the air.
I work the grill with Mohammed but he goes by his American name, which is Alfred. Alfred wears a turban. He doesn’t have to wear a chef’s hat on the grounds of religion. I try to talk to Alfred to pass the time.
&n
bsp; “Alfred, gonna watch the game tonight?” I say.
“No,” he says.
“Not a sports fan?”
“Ninety percent of the players are black. I lose interest.”
I wish they’d put Jim on the grill so I’d have somebody to talk to.
Jim and I share a room at Sunrise, the halfway house. They won’t let Jim up front because of his skin. He’s been through a couple of windshields and he’s got pretty bad acne. Something’s always bleeding on his face. They don’t want customers to see him touching the food, so he works in the back, cutting up lettuce for the salad bar, filling up dressing tubs, bringing out burger patties. No one talks to Jim. If somebody needs to say something to Jim, they tell me and I tell Jim. Howard Lippman the manager, How-Weird the Lip Man, said, “Corky, why don’t you tell Jim to do something about his skin? There’s stuff you can do for that.” Jim just doesn’t care about his skin. Not a priority.
“Corky?” It’s Mary, one of the waitresses. “I need a favor.” I owe a debt to Mary. I took her home after work once, made love to her, and then didn’t want it to go any further. “Will you take an order down to Mac?”
None of the girls want to go down to Mac because of the things he says to them. Mac’s the black guy who works the ovens in the basement. If somebody orders the flounder or an omelet it goes down to Mac. It’s hot down there, and there’s no ventilation. Once I said, “Mac, how do you stand it?”
“You know how,” Mac says.
“No, I don’t,” I say.
Mac whispers, “’Cause a nigger can get used to anything.”
I pretend I don’t hear and pick up the food.
“You heard me,” he says.
Rare is a cold red center. Medium-rare is a hot red center. Medium is a pink center. And medium-well is cooked through. There’s no well-done unless someone sends back medium-well, and then we cook the hell out of it. The girl orders well-done. Once I undercooked so she’d send back and I could see where she bit, what condiments she used. She uses ketchup. Afterward, I felt like that was wrong, like I was peeking in on her. It’s personal, how people fix and eat their food. But when I touched her burger, I was touching something she touched, something I’d made that she touched with her hands and mouth, and it made me shake a bit. I wonder if she thought about that too.
