by ed. Pela Via
Back upstairs Lassiter dashed out to the ambulance.
“He’s probably checking the two-way radio,” I told Gail.
“That sounds likely,” she said.
She sat with Edwina on her lap. The beagle’s belly was huge.
“Is she pregnant?”
“She is, little bitch.” Gail scratched the dog’s mudflap ears. “I don’t know who, but can guess about when. Set to pop. Should’ve got her spayed.”
“I don’t think he’ll be much use the rest of the shift.”
“He’s got that look to him, doesn’t he?” she said. “You just stood idly by?”
“You know Lassy.”
“Better and better each day.”
She leaned back on the sofa, threw an arm over the back. This was a woman who actually would sleep soundly with a sixteen-foot snake in her basement. She smiled at me in a peculiar fashion that compelled me to look elsewhere. You got the sense she’d entomb herself into you. She’d certainly done so to Stubbs, who’d been stumbling around hang-dog and radish-eyed for weeks.
Lassiter came in and collapsed on the sofa. Gail shooed Edwina to the floor. She cradled Lassiter’s head and pulled him in. Lassiter fell into her like a man leaping off a skyscraper.
I went to the bathroom and took a piss. Afterwards I braced my hands on either side of the bathroom mirror. My nose was a swollen root.
I watched myself get old. A recurring vision, lately. My skin went yellow and sagged round my neck. My eyes drained of color. My lips thinned and peeled back. Filigreed cracks bisected my teeth, which turned the color of faded burlap. I’d be back at Honey’s soon, occupying my same bar stool beside the same wrecks. Yet I remember those nights in the basin when I’d unhooked bass from treble hooks with hands as unlined as a baby’s.
“I remember different days,” I said softly. “I still remember, at least.”
But some nights you feel it pulling away like a ship from shore. A dwindling speck on the horizon. Gone.
Creeping back down the hall, I heard Lassiter.
“My love,” he said in a confessional whisper. “My love is a tiger shut up and bellowing in concrete walls . . . you make me feel like something cut away from cancer, do you know that? My love is . . . a mongrel. You can’t mate it, babe, because it doesn’t bear out pure, my love is, is . . . I want to take you upstairs but only if . . . I want . . . love to . . .”
Soon he was sleeping on Gail’s lap. All the shit he’d popped tonight, the inside of his skull must have been broadcasting that early-morning Indian Head.
“He’s sweet,” Gail said, seeing me there. “But what does it earn you?”
She eased Lassiter’s skull off her lap. I followed her into the backyard. The night was warm. The boom of the Falls carried over the maples. She pulled a pack of Salems out of her robe pocket and offered me one. Our smoke curled above the fence. In the darkness the shape of her body seemed to both gain and lose something: she seemed larger, yet somehow weightless. She caught me staring, smiled slightly, and sighed in a way that spoke to some unstated inevitability.
“Why do you figure he’s doing it to himself?” she said.
Most cases, you figure there has to be a reason. It’s impossible to believe a man might wake up one morning and say: Starting today, I will embark on a systematic path of self-destruction.
“Did you see the snake?”
“You’re okay with that?”
She ashed her cigarette with a practiced flick of the wrist.
“We all make our little sacrifices.”
Edwina pawed the porch door. When Gail let her out she made a beeline for the bushes.
“Get out of there, you,” said Gail, crossing the lawn to where the dog was nosing around after something.
There’s a species of white-winged butterfly who cocoon underground. They do so communally, in holes dug for other purposes. They are the only species to do so. These butterflies only live in the Niagara peninsula. The water table is just right, and they have adapted to where they cannot exist anywhere else—a fact as sad as any I’ve ever heard.
When Gail stepped over their hole they burst forth, new bodies uncountable in their brilliance. They spiraled up on a warm night zephyr, coiling round her body. Their luminous wings reflected the moonlight so it appeared as though Gail were encircled by a cone of tiny, bright paper lanterns. She held her hands out, palms down, same as one does when wading into dark water. She laughed in pure startled delight. The butterflies moved together, possessed of that same hive-mind common to schools of fish, circling and ascending until they broke against the moon.
They vanished over the fence. The phosphorescent powder of their wings sparkled the air. Gail reached towards them as if to say: take me with you. I wished that for her. Truly, I did. Jesus, I wished it for all of us.
“Let’s do something about that nose,” she said after a while.
She sat me at the table. She filled a Ziploc bag with ice and stood behind me.
“Lean back.”
The top of my head touched her stomach. Through all that softness I felt the persistent tension of her adductor muscles. Her hand cupped my chin. She pressed the ice to my nose hard enough to hurt, but it was a manageable hurt.
“That’s better, isn’t it?”
Months ago we’d gotten a call. Apartment complex in Fallsview Heights, Love Canal district. Lassiter was tits on a bull by that point. I left him in the ambulance. My knock was answered by a rail-skinny woman. Rosacea blooms on her face, which was pinched with worry. The smell hit me like a fist. I had to crank the door against a weight of old flyers and trash to get in. Roach carcasses ground into the carpet. A half-dozen lettuce heads on the kitchen countertop were rotted to brown mush. The bathtub tub was full of cat shit. Beside it lay a girl I pegged for about ten years old.
“There’s something wrong with her,” the woman said.
The girl was unconscious. Her face was red and the skin under her fingernails was pale violet. I knelt on the filth-caked tiles, pressed my ear to her chest. Heartbeat and respiration weak. I stuck a finger into her mouth: gummy strings stretched between her lips. When that search yielded nothing, I figured it had to be toxic shock.
“I need to get her out of here.”
The woman shook her head violently. “Just fix her here.”
“Here’s what’s the matter. The mold. The cat shit. The rotting . . . everything.”
“It’s not that.” The woman smiled, as if it might compel me to see things her way.
“She’s never been sick.” I picked the girl up. She weighed nothing. The woman set herself in my path. “I don’t give you permission—”
I shoved past. She stepped over piles of trash to block me again.
“God damn it,” I said. “You want her to die?”
“I’m her mother. Fix her here. We’ll stay here. I want—”
I kicked her in the stomach. She made a noise out of a Z-grade horror movie and slumped into a pile of newspapers. I ran out hollering for Lassiter. He came to and helped me intubate the girl. We highballed it to the hospital.
I saved a life that night. Even let myself feel good about it for a few days. But before long it dawned that I could as easily have not. I was doing my job, and I’m pretty good at it. But you don’t give your accountant a medal for filing your taxes, do you? That doesn’t absolve him of being a waste in every other aspect of human existence, does it?
The truth is: I’m a garden-variety asshole. I’ll happily ruin myself, but I never cleared that gap to where I’d be willing to ruin others. And that’s the crucial leap. You’ll never go far as a garden-variety asshole. The stakes are too low. You’ll hear it said that good guys finish last, but the fact is that plenty of good guys are content in their own skin, which is immeasurable in terms of pure happiness. Then there are those who truly don’t care how many spines they grind into powder—and those guys sleep the blessed sleep of the damned.
Then there are guys like me
and Lassiter. We skew bad, sure, but not nearly bad enough. And nobody profits in the middle. Nobody ever has.
In the bedroom Gail was a soft marvelous monolith. She was Stonehenge and, like an ancient fear-struck druid, I wanted only to worship. She removed my clothes with practiced ease, slipping her fingers into my shirt to pop each button. There was precious little beneath her robe: panties so sheer they could be made of spider’s thread and a purple brassiere with about a hundred clasps. In the darkness pale half moons shone under her breasts, the rest of her skin tanned an edible brown.
My hands felt like paws, tiny mouse paws. It seemed a very real possibility a man could become hopelessly lost in a woman such as Gail—they’d dispatch a search party and find you blissfully nestled in some wondrous grotto or delta.
“Oh, Gail,” I breathed, stamping awkwardly on my trousers to free my legs. “Oh, Gail, Gail . . .” nuzzling her neck, aware of how sappy I sounded but unable to stop. She inspired this untenable desire: a man began to wish for six arms and a half-dozen tongues to take in the full measure of her.
“Easy,” she said, laughing softly. “Easy, big fella, and quietly.”
We sunk onto the bed. Her breath smelled of smoke; her skin, Noxema. I grappled with her lovely breasts and laughed helplessly, the way you do at a restaurant when your desert arrives bearing a towering cone of flame.
The hound, Edwina, squatted at the edge of the bed. She made supplicating, plaintive whines.
“Do something,” Gail said. “Cyrus, please.”
I shooed Edwina downstairs. She went unwillingly, her belly swaying.
Back in bed Gail guided my head down until it resided between her legs. Oh so arid down there—a ghost-town gulch. She gripped my hair sternly, as a rider grips the reins of a dressage mount. Her free hand slid under my chin, centering me.
“Stick your tongue out,” she said. “Flex it, now. Make it hard.”
Gail moved her hips slightly, flexing her gluteal muscles, rubbing herself on my tongue. I wanted to caress her but my elbows were trapped under her thighs. She emitted soft songlike noises. My tongue hurt from the constant clenching.
“What are you doing?” she said, when I took a moment to moisten it. “Not now.”
Her rocking became vigorous. A violent claustrophobia overtook me. Her body tensed, relaxed, tensed again, went slack. She rolled my skull onto her thigh.
I clambered up to the pillows. She lay facing the opposite direction. I kissed her neck. She ruffled my hair absently, as if I were a child or a dog.
“That was great,” she said.
The depths of her insincerity sucked the air from my lungs.
“I’m glad.”
“Really, fantastic.”
“He doesn’t deserve you, Gail.”
I had no proof that this was true. I didn’t know what Gail was worth, really, valuations of that sort being difficult. It just seemed the thing to say.
“You’re simple, Cyrus.”
She stated this as a known fact. The sun is hot. Water’s wet.
“You’re pretty much harmless, I guess, but your view of the world is simple. And also, you’re a drunk.”
She got out of bed. After a while it seemed silly not to do the same. I gargled with Listerine and found her downstairs eating meatloaf. Lassiter remained kayoed on the sofa.
“Where do you keep it?”
Gail nodded to the cabinet. The ice she’d pressed to my nose was on the counter, barely melted. I iced a glass and hit it with a healthy splash of Comrade Popov’s potato vodka—econo-jug-size. And I was a juicehead? I topped it with OJ and asked if Gail wanted anything.
“Can you make a Buttery Nipple?” she said, with a coy smile.
In that moment I saw an obese ungenerous slag with a tramp pedicure spilled over a cheap Ikea kitchen chair shoveling cold meatloaf into her yapper. Gail caught my look and nodded, as if she saw the same thing.
“Give me whatever you’re having,” she said.
I fixed her one and sat opposite. Before long I heard them. The squeals. The thin, febrile squeals.
I took my drink and tiptoed past Lassiter, down the hallway to the basement door. Which was open. Just a smidgen. Just a crack.
I flicked the stairwell light and walked down the steps. The prehistoric smell of snake—the way dinosaurs must have smelled. The squeals were much louder down here.
“Cyrus?” said Gail from very, very far away. “What is it?”
I groped for the nearest white string and popped on a light. The glass slipped from my hand and it shattered.
Sissy was eating Edwina. The snake had unhinged her floating jawbone to engulf the hound’s head and brisket. Tucked tight to its body, the dog’s paws clenched spasmodically. The squeals hadn’t been coming from Edwina, though. They came from the embryonic creatures she was still giving birth to while being devoured. Laying about the dusty concrete were a quartet—and in short order, a quintet—of slick, dark, egg-sized puppies.
I ran over and started kicking the snake in the head. As I only had socks on, there was only so much damage I could do. Kicking Sissy in the face, jaw, the . . . what, neck? Elbow? Only so many parts to a snake.
I booted furiously but Sissy didn’t let go of the dog. A snake’s teeth point inwards, so by the time it reached this stage they were pretty much committed. Sissy looked at me—I believe so, anyway, a snake’s eyes being no more expressive than drops of molten steel—with a forlorn expression, as if to say: What the fuck you kicking for? This is the sort of shit I do, baby.
Gail stood at the foot of the stairs stifling a scream.
“Get me something,” I said. “Fast.”
She hightailed it to the tool-board. I stepped on Sissy’s neck, or whatever you call the spot where her skull gave way to the acidic conveyor belt that was her body—stomping with my heel like a man trying to kick-start a motorcycle. While I put the boots to Sissy another slick dark egg squeezed out of Edwina. The dog’s paws weren’t twitching anymore—they were stiff, as though a tremendous current were passing through them.
Gail handed me a hacksaw. Well, okay.
I straddled Sissy, cinched my knees tight to the brilliant cylinder of her body—a beautiful snake, as far as that went—positioned the blade behind the point where her jaw thinned and raked the blade across her scales.
Sissy’s tail whipped up and tagged me on the shoulder, throwing me off-balance. Gail leapt on the snake and pinned it to the floor. What a woman! Our combined weight was well in excess of Sissy’s, but the snake was pretty much all muscle, and deep in the lizard cortex of her brain she must have realized we were bent on her extermination.
“Go!” Gail said. “Cut!”
I bore down and muscled the blade across Sissy’s neck. Blood buzz-sawed out of the gash, accompanied by a high hiss, like air let out of a bicycle tire. Sissy bucked frantically. I scissored my legs round her, wrenching my free arm underneath. Her skin was chilled industrial plastic coated in Teflon. My fingers snagged in the sideways ‘V’ of her mouth: dog fur coated in warm lube. The sluggish bap of Edwina’s heart.
I dug my fingers into the cold bone of Sissy’s skull and inhaled the dry reptilian stink of snake: a pile of rotting leaves. Taste of snake blood: cheap Chinese wine. My elbow pistoned. The blade sunk deep. A sound not unlike the rip of old lawn chair webbing. We both rolled aside as the snake lashed crazily, tearing her own head off. Sissy’s body coiled round itself the way a nightcrawler winds itself round a fishhook. The snake’s lung—a ten-foot-long bladder all wormed with veins—slipped out of her chest cavity like a gigantic condom.
“Oh, no,” Gail said. “Oh, no, no, no.”
Awful, watching anything die. So rarely does it occur with much dignity at all. Sissy’s muscles released. Her tail thumped the ground, raising plumes of dust. A pint can of Rust-Oleum paint disgorged from her stomach and rolled across the floor.
Edwina’s snout protruded through the ragged hole in Sissy’s neck. I’d inadverten
tly sawed her nose off.
“Is she dead?”
“Of course she’s dead,” I told Gail. “I sawed her . . . her fucking head off.”
“I mean Edwina.”
“I’m sorry. She’s dead. Suffocated.”
My fingers were so tight-clenched I had to use my opposite hand to pry them off the hacksaw handle. The puppies issued fitful mewls. Their slick bodies were picking up dust. One was latched onto Edwina’s nipple, sucking.
I dropped them into the pockets of Gail’s robe, like two kids stealing crab-apples. Her robe was torn down one side, her hair tousled, jewels of blood on her feet. Never had I beheld any woman so purely magnetic.
Upstairs, Lassiter remained dead to the world. This was best.
“We need whole milk.” Gail cupped her hands under her robe pockets. Pulled them tight to her stomach. “Warm milk . . . I have an eyedropper somewhere.”
Walking to the 24-hour Piggly Wiggly, I couldn’t stop thinking about that can of Rust-Oleum. Time was, Lassiter would never have forgotten to feed Sissy. Now she was living in a basement, swallowing paint cans in the dark.
The store was empty, halogen lights buzzing. I grabbed a gallon of milk from the cooler. Only then did it dawn I was covered in blood. At least I was wearing my uniform.
The cashier was a ratty-haired scab with partially-lidded eyes. Pale blue tattoos braided from the sleeves of his orange uniform.
“That snake blood?” he asked, waving the milk over the scanner.
“Yes . . . snake.”
“I figured snake. That, or lizard.”
He bagged my milk with the same half-lidded gaze, then became deeply absorbed in the crispy-burnies rotating on the frankfurter rollers.
When I got back Gail had swaddled the puppies in terrycloth towels. When she took the milk from me, she kissed the side of my mouth. She poured milk into a saucepot and warmed it on a burner. I fixed another drink and gazed at the puppies. So small, but everything was there. Paws like tiny hands.
