by Todd Grimson
Someone spoke to her. Errol. He had a table, it turned out, over to the side of the band. She was glad to see him, it felt like they were already friends. She didn’t know what she would have done if it had felt strange. No, he was as she had experienced him before, and she enjoyed just being in his presence, interested in seeing the elaboration of his personality, of who he was.
Power and Glory, from Jamaica, segued from “So Jah Say” into a cover of Black Uhuru’s “What Is Life?”—a great song Track had once included on a compilation tape he’d sent to her, a song characterized by a stinging, smoky electric clavinet. She took another sip of the cold cane liquor and asked Errol about himself, sort of interviewing him. He cooperated, amused but seemingly telling the truth.
He was Errol Mwangi. He was a writer, a journalist, and a ghostwriter. Just now he was working on a novel. In London he’d ghostwritten a novel for some actress, using her tape-recorded memories, the diary they’d made her keep in rehab, and much that he’d simply invented, jokes that she now thought she’d made up herself. He’d been paid well, and part of the bargain was that he keep his mouth shut. When he’d seen her on the BBC, being praised for what he’d written, he found that difficult, and so he’d come down here. A publisher had given him an advance. The riots in Brixton? He’d been there, he’d covered that… his novel would be centered around that situation, the underside of British life.
They had another drink. He was smoking, so she asked him for a cigarette. At the break, as she was playing her part of the game, answering a few things about herself, telling about having appeared as an actress, one of the guitarists, the bass player, and one of the female backup singers came to sit down at their table. They knew Errol. Lisa just smiled and hung out, until after a while the band members went back up to play another set. She hadn’t said much, but she was having a good time.
Errol’s skin was so very dark.
“We could listen to some more music”—he gestured, a trifle drunk-enly—”or maybe go somewhere else, hear some sambas, dance …”
“I danced the other night,” she said. It wasn’t true. She’d gone to a movie with Tavinho, but they hadn’t danced.
“You did? Well … maybe we should do something else, then. We could go back to my room.” He leaned over to her and kissed her, embraced her. She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. The red lighting made everything different; all the shadows seemed alive. Looking up at some new people who had entered the club, Errol said something about how there were unusual people in the hinterlands, you wouldn’t believe the unusual leatherwork, but she couldn’t really understand, this set was a little louder than the last. She didn’t think you could really dance to reggae … you could sway, and move your ass. That’s what Sabrina, the backup singer, did. Sabrina had spoken to Lisa at the table, and Lisa had listened intently, though she had understood very little of the Kingston patois. Now, as they left, Sabrina gave her a big smile, and it felt like they were friends, like they’d known each other for years. Deceptive, beguiling impression. Lisa held on to Errol’s arm.
There was a crowd outside, in the night… though not waiting to get in. To Lisa, it was unclear why they were gathering; not knowing the language made her feel dumb. A woman in her thirties, with an air of authority, stared openly at Lisa, looking into her eyes. She had long dark hair pulled back severely, too much makeup, false eyelashes, heavy earrings, a big cross on a chain around her neck, a low-cut top, a short black skirt, and then these little red patent leather boots. She was scary. Lisa clung more tightly to Errol, and they walked away from the mysterious crowd, which seemed to be waiting for something to happen or someone in particular to arrive.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Errol answered. He looked back too, he knew what she meant. “I don’t know,” he said again. They walked away. It was ten blocks or so to Errol’s apartment. Lisa was slightly drunk. She yawned, and remembered kissing Tavinho that afternoon.
Errol’s apartment was nice but messy, clothes lying around, empty bottles, newspapers, magazines, papers, and books. She sat on the bed. In a few moments Errol was next to her, touching her, their mouths were pressed wetly together, he was unbuttoning her dress. His bare chest struck her as enormously attractive, and when they were naked, lying on the pale blue sheets, she kissed his chest, lightly bit a nipple, tasting him, thinking: a big chocolate man. His mouth tasted of the sugar cane liquor, lime, and a hint of marijuana….
He had very sensitive, gentle fingers. Stroking the lips of her labia, patiently, music of the nerve endings, up to touch the super-responsive place where the lips came together, and then the clit, so that she said, in a low voice, “Ohhh …” She would have been ready to fuck, but Errol moved so that his head was down where he could eat her, leaving it incumbent upon her to behave reciprocally, do the best she could. She looked at his penis, the throb of it in her hand, when she opened her mouth to suck it she closed her eyes. She kept hold of it around the base. It had always been a fuzzy concept to her, the notion of “giving good head.” All she knew how to do was suck to please, to imagine what she, had she a cock, would like someone to do. Suction, tongue action, temperature—she did the best she could. Code … had liked her to suck him until her jaw was sore, until she was sick of it, while he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling; he said that was the most philosophical he ever got, the time when he experienced the most profound thoughts of which he was capable. And Lou Greenwood, Lou Adolph, Lou Burke … could never get hard without some preliminary sucking, though he didn’t like to go down on her in return. Code had been selfish, but he’d been willing to trade places, to do whatever she wanted, for as long as she wished. Tavinho … just wanted to please, he was a little anxious about it, though once he got going he was fine.
What impressed her about Errol, as he fucked her, was his easy strength, the power of his body. Even relaxed, his physique seemed to radiate energy—and it now felt like he could move his penis around, independent of his hips or the rest of his body, to an extent she didn’t think she’d ever known before … the waves flowing through her cunt drove her into hot, flesh-melting delirium, images flickered at hypervelocity, her eyes wide open, seeing visions, his face above her, all those excitable nerves firing, overfiring, like having a seizure … pinwheels and pulsing arrows, walk through the doorway into the secret room, all the colors at once … crescendo, decrescendo, an animal moan as the spent organ, in its wrapper, like a candy bar, contracted and withdrew.
In a while, perspiration beginning to cool, she left the bed to go to his bathroom and pee. When she returned, he said, “Look, you’re bleeding. What happened to you?” She followed his eyes, seeing on her left upper arm, right at the mouth of the stylized jaguar, one single, dark, ruby red drop of blood. She had no idea what had caused it. It didn’t hurt. The drop welled up—she touched a finger to it, then sucked the finger, tasting the salt of the blood, maybe its magnesium or zinc. A familiar flavor, bringing back some kind of inchoate, primal memory. Lisa smiled at Errol, feeling naked, young, not sure if he really liked her so very much or not.
“While you’re up,” he said, “would you mind getting me a beer? Why don’t you have one too?”
Lisa obeyed. She didn’t feel like drinking more alcohol, but she took a small sip to keep him company, reclining next to him in the bed. The jaguar bled no more. It had done Lisa some good to have come so hard. What a relief. The cells in her body had been craving the nourishment fed them by the energy released.
Errol said, “Has anyone ever told you how pretty these are?” studying and examining her breasts, hefting one as if weighing it, seeing how much of it he could hold in his hand, rubbing the erect nipple gently with his thumb. They fucked again, much more slowly, with Lisa on top, Errol holding on to, fondling, the whole time, the soft meat of her breasts. Amiably, without too much attention, he asked her about her Brazilian friends. She didn’t say much, but in between easy, slow plunges, revealed that
her father worked for Universo. Conversation lapsed. He wanted to take her from behind. At first she thought he meant in the ass. No, in the cunt, with her on elbows and knees. To finish satisfactorily, though, he needed to be on top, her legs wrapped tightly around him. As the velocity reached a plateau, he pinned her knees down on the bed, which rocked and creaked … Errol was fucking her very aggressively now, they were both panting and drenched with perspiration, Lisa was in a daze, having completely lost all sense of time, hardly knowing where she was, her identity overflowing the boundaries of her flesh.
Soon after he had come, lying on her for a minute or two, and then going to the bathroom, Errol opened another beer, took a long swallow, and, lying on his side, his arm flung out abandonedly, he fell deeply, peacefully asleep. Lisa turned away from him in the bed. She was thinking. And then she slept, but only for about an hour. She didn’t know what woke her up. In the bathroom, she saw in the mirror that her jaguar tattoo had bled again, it must have just happened, right in the mouth of the beast, one big, dark, red, unbroken drop. She checked her other arm, checked her ass: no blood anywhere else. Boy. Her face looked sleepy, sort of a blank pout … she could smell her sweat, her sex. She was sore.
In the entryway, the door opened, she could hear it. A lamp clicked on. Lisa came in to see who it was, ready to wake up Errol, to start yelling if it was a thief. So she was somewhat excited when she confronted the woman, who looked her up and down with open scorn, saying something Lisa could not understand. Well, she knew what puta meant.
The woman seemed at home here, and Lisa assumed the fact that she had a key was significant. So Lisa began to get dressed. The woman was quite pretty, even beautiful, with long hair, wearing a sexy dress … she could have been Miss Brazil. Errol was awake. He said, “Tereza—” and the woman interrupted him, she hadn’t been too angry before, just scornful, controlled, contemptuous—now her voice rose, and she threw a glass against the wall. Boceda. That meant cunt. Since Lisa wasn’t jealous or surprised that Errol would have other women, she found it unreasonable for Tereza to be so dramatic, so unrestrained.
Lisa was sitting down at the foot of the bed to pull on her tights when Tereza hit her. It was a punch, not a slap, and Lisa didn’t expect it or see it coming; the shock of it brought tears to her eyes. Tereza was looking her right in the face now, demanding eye contact, as she spoke to her in a spiteful, vicious tone. Lisa made no attempt to listen or try to understand a word. When Errol stirred in the bed, Tereza suddenly brandished a stiletto, she must have had her hand on it in her purse. Histrionically, she seemed to threaten castration, and Errol was mad now, but frightened as well, he covered his vulnerable parts with a pillow. He kept talking to Tereza, trying to calm her down.
Tereza chose, however, to threaten Lisa with the knife, enjoying being dangerous. To intimidate, to see how much fear she could cause, Tereza held the knife very close to Lisa’s face, almost touching her cheek with the point. Puta. Piranha. Then it seemed like she was asking, rhetorically Do you want me to slash your face?
Lisa held up her hands, and Tereza pricked her palm, the pain bit her sharply. Suddenly, with decisiveness, Errol slapped hard at Tereza’s wrist, so that the knife flew out of her hand. It hit Lisa, without seemingly cutting her, and she picked it up as soon as it fell to the carpet. Tereza rushed after her. Without thinking, Lisa rose and in a single fluid motion stabbed Tereza, hitting a rib, sliding the knife down and stabbing her again, meeting some resistance in the meat but pushing hard, hot blood springing onto her hand as Tereza screamed and the knife stayed in.
“Why?” Errol asked, truly not understanding, and Lisa shook her head. Errol called an ambulance. He put his pants on and tried to reassure Tereza, who was gasping and praying—Lisa walked out the door. Maybe she should have stabbed Errol instead.
ELEVEN
Across the street there was a tiny park featuring a statue of some famous man, flowers, a few palm trees, and some benches. Lisa sat there in sorrow, just letting the tears run down her face, as the paramedics and police arrived on the scene. There were many other people around, and a young couple sat on the bench next to hers, wondering what was going on … Lisa mourned what was happening to her, the unknown planets within the universe of her mind were
colliding, wreaking havoc. She blamed the spell, she was turning into a creature she didn’t know, and while not all of this was awful, at the moment the loss of control filled her with sorrow…. The ambulance took Tereza away, an IV in her arm. Lisa didn’t think she had killed her, maybe she’d punctured a lung, but you could survive that if nothing went wrong.
A little later, when they brought Errol out, he spotted her; it must have been painful to him to have to point her out. The police came to her as the crowd murmured and stared. A policeman asked her, in English, if her name was Lisa. She said yes.
“Did you put the knife into that woman? Tereza de Souza, the dancer. Did you do this?”
“Yes.”
Lisa stood, and her wrists were handcuffed behind her. She was taken away to the police station, to the jail. No one spoke any more English to her for a while. She felt serene. Gradually, however, realizing where she was, the history of how people had routinely been tortured—female suspects raped or violated with electricity—she began to tremble with fear….
Lisa sat on a plain wooden chair in the interrogation room, before an old wooden table with scars, and she was conscious of her tattoos. Being American might not make a difference, she might seem accessible for anonymous revenge, something like that, fucking a black and then stabbing his other girlfriend, a stripper…. It was sordid, and she was helpless, nervous, sore, afraid. They had left her in this room, with the door open, only a matron to watch over her, a heavyset Indian-looking woman with an indifferent face, a face so indifferent as to be cruel. No doubt she’d seen it all. Every kind of pleading, tears, lies of betrayal. Every variety of human weakness exposed.
“Porfavor … onde e … banheiro?” Lisa asked. She had to empty her bladder, she was uncomfortable … she’d been working up her courage to ask.
The woman called into the hallway (“0//”) and another officer came along; it was no surprise that the door to the bathroom was left half open, the male officer outside, while the matron watched her pee.
“Muito obrigado,” Lisa said, coming out, and the matron mumbled, “De nada.”
TWELVE
It took longer than expected for Dr. Nova’s connection with Universo to kick in. Lisa, in a cell by herself, had to stay in jail all weekend. She refused to eat the food, she was on a mini hunger strike. For her own private, dimly sensed reasons.
Hugging her father, she felt nine years old, faint, she thought for a flash of Mary Bell, the ten-year-old murderess, she stumbled and almost fell on her way out to the waiting car, somebody took a photo of her, only as she fully realized how truly hungry she was, how just a piece of bread would be a feast, only then did it occur to her that the sexual fever seemed to have passed, her incipient nymphomania had relented … maybe at the moment she had stabbed de Souza, fulfilling the omen of the bleeding jaguar tattoo.
At home in Sao Conrado, all she wanted at first was a piece of bread. Then, after a while, a mango. Celina, somewhat surprisingly, patted her on the shoulder and promised that all would be well.
Over the next few days Tavinho called several times, but she refused to take his calls. She was ashamed. Errol did not call, and she was somewhat hurt by this. She might have given him a chance.
A postcard arrived from Christine, saying that there had been a fire at Lou’s house. It hadn’t burned down all the way.
Meanwhile, Isabel, rather to Dr. Nova’s helpless dismay, had contacted an umbanda priest she had met before, he was well-known … and he had thrown the cowrie shells, contacted Lisa’s spirit, “like, you might say, her guardian angel,” it had been explained to Nova, who said nothing to indicate disbelief. A purification ceremony was needed, they were told. Nova supposed it wouldn’t
hurt. This was a side of Isabel he didn’t like to encourage, but now that matters with Lisa had definitely become irrational, he felt there was little choice but to indulge all this.
Lisa didn’t seem to care one way or the other. She looked at the cards, sort of like a tarot deck, and slept in a room with white candles, and kept her thoughts to herself.
Tavinho showed up at the gate, but when Lisa heard this, she went into her room and locked the door. She told Isabel, “Tell him I won’t see him, I don’t want to talk to him. I won’t come out of my room until he’s gone.”
Meanwhile, Lisa worked on the script to L.A. Ripper II. It was all clear to her now, she had plotted it out while in jail. Basic melodramatic principles. Terror and pity. Foreshadowing and payoff. A big surprise. The sex workers (whores) get the Ripper in the end. They castrate him. Caitlin faxed some of it to Jules Brandenberg, and Lisa talked to him on the phone, not a very good connection, but he was pleased, pleased too by the potential for American publicity in the trouble she’d gotten in. He wanted to know if there was anything on video of her arrest.
THIRTEEN
Ice cream. Although it was rather cool outside, there was a chill in the breeze, Ariel Mendoza wanted some ice cream to line his stomach. If it made his teeth chatter, that was OK. Tegucigalpa is situated at a higher elevation than one might think, and it can get pretty cold. Ariel had read a good deal about the Mayans, whose civilization perished, in large part, right around 900 A.D. for reasons no one yet understood. The Aztecs—and, down south, the Incas—were comparative latecomers to power, ruling for only a little more than a hundred years before Cortes (and, some ten years later, Pizarro) arrived upon the scene.
Just in what is now Mexico, the estimated population before the arrival of the Spaniards was twenty-five million people. By 1600 there were twenty-four million less. History, all well known.
