He pitied anyone who saw nothing but skin, but envied their confusion, as well.
And there were those tattoos on her thighs, too. Not as interesting to Larry as the movies about babies, but revving their engines from Bully’s knees on up were cars of every make and model. Right under some Old English script bridging both knees that shouted, “Remember Our Vets!,” the fleet of vehicles was all stacked in formation to lean out their driver’s side windows and watch the show starting on the tiny black monolith, well, more like a monorail actually, that was now cruising between her legs.
That’s where the movie would be.
Larry tried to picture her receiving all these tattoos, the artist at the parlor leaning in close with black gloves and the hum of a needle and anticipating exactly what to draw on that tiny black screen down there. Larry was surprised by the movie he saw. Impossibly, it depicted this exact moment, the naked girl standing on a bunker at D-Day, with another tiny screen between her legs, and another movie flickering down there, too. And another, and another, all the way to infinity until they were too small to see without really getting your nose in there like any good director.
She tapped an invisible microphone to get the crowd’s attention, and he was finally angry for the first time since the credits. That was his job, not hers.
Jack’s apartment building. Later that day. In the hallway, Big Cop and Small Cop run up on Jack’s door, rainwater dripping off their guns and noses. Small Cop knocks with the authority of bad news, ready for delivery. He knocks harder than Big Cop’s previous partner, Little Cop, who has called in sick, specifically “sick of this shit.” Small Cop is mumbling the lyrics to Nick Cave’s “Messiah Ward,” although he has no way of knowing this, and Big Cop mistakes it for some sort of pre-game psych-up, even though the future hit single is actually a post-op psych-out chant back from Jack’s Red Cross training days.
“They keep bringing out the dead now, and it’s easy just to look away. They’re bringing out the dead now, and it’s been a strange, strange day...”
He beats on the door for another minute or two but gets no answer. Then Big Cop steps forward with his shotgun, and with two cocks and two blasts, there are now two holes where the hinges used to be. He kicks the loose door onto the floor and steps over it with his partner, both their gun barrels tracing lines of fire from each doorway and corner. Then Small Cop shares a frown with Big Cop and he lowers his weapon.
The apartment is empty. Not just nobody home. This place is a shell. No furniture, tables, TV, nothing. Well, almost nothing.
Small Cop walks over to a camouflage bundle leaning in the corner of the living room. He frowns as he spins it to reveal the words “T.W.A.T.” stenciled in white on the canvas.
Lightning crashes outside.
“Where the fuck is he?”Big Cop sighs.
“I don’t know. This is the number the landlord gave us. And his name is on the lease.”
“Whose name?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Just who do you think we’re dealing with here?”
“What do you mean ‘Who?’ You know who.”
“Not the Bardstown Rapist?”
“I’m just saying, the last time we saw him, there was a storm coming, just like today. We saw it on the fucking radar remember?”
“You think a storm front on the radar brings him to town?”
“I think it brings some kind of weird shit to this town.”
“Didn’t we solve that crime over in Lexington?”
“Not really. Same letters, just slightly rearranged. The man’s sign read ‘Bardstown Therapist’. Actually, I think that was just an unlicensed dentist we busted.”
“Ah! That’s right. The Jaw Carpenter!”
“Who would go to a dentist with ‘Jaw Carpenter’ on the sign?”
“Plenty of people apparently.”
The rest of the SWAT team flows into the apartment, pushing past them. One of them grabs the bag and upends it and starts shaking it around.
“Careful,” Small Cop says. “Could be dangerous.”
The officer reads the word on the side and laughs.
“Yeah, no shit. I wouldn’t stick my hand in there unless I wanted it bitten off.”
Jack’s other apartment. Seconds earlier. Jack sits up fast from reading his library book on rare dog breeds when he hears two shotgun blasts across the hall. He quickly walks out his door, fighting the urge to run, sliding past the police filing up and down the stairs and barking orders at him to get the hell back inside. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t look up. Never notices Derek outside on the sidewalk, back against a suspiciously ratty phone booth, hiding his face in a hoodie.
Derek steps inside the busted booth, and after a flurry of motions that could only be the result of substantial dimes being dropped and buttons being popped, Derek makes what certainly looks to be a very important phone call. The kind of call that ensures everyone ends up at just the right place at just the right time. This call appears to be even more crucial to the plot when Derek lets the receiver fall from his hand, and it bounces out through a hole in the booth, rattling and rolling off the sidewalk and into the yellow grass, never having been connected to anything at all. A new man, Derek exits, does a little spin, then follows Jack to his car.
Jack’s heart is pounding so loud, he opens the driver’s side door but doesn’t notice Derek open the passenger door at the same time. Both men slide into the car like men in a mirror, even slamming their doors in unison. It’s only when Jack’s police scanner under the dashboard squawks and Derek leans over to turn it down that Jack finally sees him.
“Hey!”
“I got the same one in my car,” Derek says. “No, wait, mine’s an older model-”
Jack sucks in most of the available air.
“Jesus fucking Christ, what are you doing? How did you-”
“Sorry to scare ya,” Derek says. “Door was open. Can you give me a ride?”
“I got things to do. But how did you-”
“That would be great,” Derek says, talking over him. “Because I figure, with the cops up in your apartment right now, ready to bust in the other apartment, too, we’re both in kind of a hurry.”
Derek sits back, arms crossed. Jack starts the car and pulls out.
“Where do you live?”
“I didn’t say I was going home. Just drive. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
Jack drives past the police cars on the curb, trying not to duck down and look suspicious. They drive a couple more miles in silence, then Derek starts slapping his leg to punctuate some directions.
“Left here...” Slap. “Straight awhile... right here…” Slap.
“Right here?” Jack asks him, almost smiling.
“No, not ‘right here,’ turn right here... shut the fuck up.”
Jack’s loved that joke since he was a kid, climbing around the back seat of a rusted-out Jeep Cherokee and annoying the hell out of his mom. He sees the sign for Interstate 65, and he thinks back to how he used to ride with her from Louisville to Chicago when she was interviewing for a better job to hopefully move Jack and her out of the “Goddamn Red States” for good. And on those rides, Jack would practically wait with his nose against the glass in anticipation of those endless fields of windmills on 65 that rose on the horizon, an army of metal flowers. At first, he would count the ones that weren’t spinning. Then he’d counted the ones that needed a new coat of white paint. Then, after it finally hit him what they really resembled, Jack rode that half hour in silence, mesmerized.
If you blinked your eyes during the rotations, those windmills were actually stick figures, like the ones you’d draw for a game of Hangman, but all lined up on the edge of a pool, arms above their heads, diving sideways and into the invisible waves, one at a time. Then they were standing back up and starting that dance again and again. And when the wind got them all spinning just right, it was almost impossible not to be hypnotized. His mom thought they were a g
odsend they way they kept kids quiet, but Jack used to wonder why that stretch of 65 wasn’t a pile of accidents with such an incredible distraction every possible way you looked.
Then his mother did get into a wreck on 65, when Jack wasn’t riding in the Jeep to bother her, and he didn’t wonder about this anymore. He hadn’t seen those windmills since, and these days he really didn’t give a shit what they were doing or if they’d ever find the wind or water they were reaching for.
A couple more miles with Derek’s hand on his knee, and Jack adjusts his mirror again. They both go for the radio and conjure up Dolly Parton’s “Cracker Jack,” the “best friend she ever had, but he was more than that…” and they’re both into it for a verse or two. Then they’re horrified that the song is about a dog, like every other song in the world these days. They fight to turn it off first.
“You know,” Derek says. “I’ve overheard some of your theories back at work, and I wanted you to know that I, for one, believe you.”
“Great.”
Derek leans forward and reaches behind his back, and Jack takes his foot off the gas anticipating a weapon. Instead, Derek comes up with a photograph of a woman and her daughter.
“You’ve seen this picture, right? We’re in this together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think we’re both trying to save the same person. What do you see here, Jack?”
Jack doesn’t have to look, but he answers anyway.
“I see a girl and her mother.”
“No, the real question is this, ‘Is that Jacki and her mom, or Jacki and her daughter?’”
Jack says nothing, and Derek laughs.
“I know, right?! I can’t tell anymore either! Turn right here.”
“Proceed to eighteen seventy Walnut Street… seven eleven in progress.”
A couple miles later, and Derek is still laughing when the police scanner crackles. Jack turns the volume back up to drown him out.
“What’s a ‘seven eleven’?” Derek asks.
“Dog attack,” Jack says without hesitation.
“You sure?” Derek says, mockingly. “I think it’s code for ‘dry-rub ribs.’”
Jack stares ahead.
“Naw, you’re right. Those are the only two police codes I can remember, too. ‘Seven eleven’ is a dog attack, and ‘one eight seven’ is murder. I remember ‘em because one is the exact price for a hot-dog and coffee, and the other one… is where you buy it!” Derek leans out the window and sighs. “So what is it, Jack? What is up with all the dog attacks this summer? You’d think more people would be paying attention instead of just the two of us. I guess it’s gotta be bears or sharks to make the news. Or maybe it’s the locations. But we do what we gotta do.”
“Well, a shark attack on a playground would cause some panic,” Jack agrees. “Even if it’s not a slow news day.”
“You know what I mean, smart-ass. Turn here.”
He turns.
“Okay, now stop the car and get out. And relax. I can hear you humming from here,” he says, palms out. “See that? Not armed. You have nothing to worry about from me.”
“Yeah, right,” Jack mutters. “Until you tell me I’m related to you, too.”
They step out of the car, and Jack is not surprised to see that they’re back at the scene of his crime, parked in front of the tree where both of Jacki’s boyfriends died, back to the place where Toni was conceived after the crash.
Derek walks toward the point of impact, the tree stump. Ground Zero. Patient Zero. Jack follows him. They circle the stump, and Derek’s fingertips brush a ring of dying Venus Flytraps planted in the rotten bark around the edges. The stump looks evil to Jack, like a shrine, a place of rituals, bad memories, and stagnant black rain.
Derek squats down by his plants.
“I don’t know what’s going wrong here. Seeds should grow anywhere.”
“Why are we here, Derek?”
Derek brushes the fuzz on the lips of a bulb, trying to get it to move. He brushes it again a little rougher, and it twitches feebly. Then he flicks it in frustration, and it lolls on its stem like it has a broken neck.
“You know, the first time I ever saw one of these things, it scared the shit out of me,” he says. “It’s hard to get your mind around the fact that a plant is moving where there’s no breeze anywhere, you know what I mean?”
“Nope.” Jack thinks about how people typically look for the exits in a bad situation. Outside in the open, with too many options, he finds it impossible to visualize possible escape.
“My little sister was growing them in her room, right next to her bed. And for the longest time, I thought they were dangerous. Especially growing next to your fucking bed, right? I remember watching her feed ‘em dead spiders and flies, and that was crazy enough. But the thing I remember most was the hamburger. She would actually drop little bits of burger or roast beef or turkey, and it would gobble ‘em up. Of course, back then when I was young and hearing everything all wrong, I thought it was called a ‘Venus Mouse Trap,’ and I coulda swore that’s how hard they snapped shut. But now I realize it’s a much more graceful snap, a smooth, almost sinister motion, kinda like those expensive soft-eject cassette players.”
He suddenly grabs Jack’s arm like a cop.
“Are you listening to me? Don’t you understand how weird it is for your sister to be feeding a plant scraps from her dinner, like she was feeding a dog under the table?”
“What’s your point, man?”
“The point is, a little kid starts wondering what exactly they’ll eat. You drop all sorts of shit in there to get a reaction. Pennies, rocks, staples, cigarette ashes. Hell, one time I actually drew a picture of a fly and tossed it in there to see what it would do. Then, when my sister went off to school and left those crazy plants behind - this is right around when I’m turning 13 or so - I start to wonder what else would make them snap shut. So, yeah, maybe I pissed in it a little bit.”
“Oh, boy. Of course you did.”
“But nothing happened! So I shit in it.”
“Why not.”
“But that flattened them. Killed half of them, I think. So then I figured it out. I jerked off into one. Squirted right into that mouth. Nobody can tell me they weren’t made for that.”
He nudges Jack like they’re buddies.
“I know it looks like another part of the body with those eyelashes on there, but it’s definitely a mouth, trust me.”
“Christ.”
“And slowly, slowly it closed around me as gently as any woman.”
Derek pulls Jack down to a sitting position next to him, tapping one of the largest plants on the stump. The green half moon at the end of its stalk stands taller than them all.
“Why did you come back here, Jack? What were you waiting for?”
“Waiting for Godot.”
“Who?”
“Forget it.”
“You see that?”
Jack looks close and sees a dark spot in the center of the closed leaves where the fading sunlight can’t shine all the way through. Even though it’s no longer struggling, the shadow of a fly is visible. The teardrops of the wings, the head, even the snout are clear.
“See that bug in there? That exact thing saved my life. And years later, it’s what gave me my purpose. You want to know how?”
“Cannot wait,” Jack says, clapping his hands and getting comfortable.
“It was a day like this, about twenty years ago, living alone, just moved to the Coast. The sun was coming through the window like a laser one morning when I noticed it. There was this dark spot inside the Flytrap on top of my television. At first, I was amazed it had captured its own dinner, you know, ‘cause I’d been feeding it Taco Bell like my sister taught me to. But then I started to think about what the plant looked like to me at that moment, that shadow inside and what that was trying to tell me...”
He strokes the plant lovingly and it seems to recoil.
> “…see, back then, I had been getting this pain in my left testicle every day for a couple months. And I just assumed it was from riding a bike or taking a car door in the balls or leaning on my mop or something like that. But when I stood there that day, with the static of the television screen tickling against the hair on my stomach, thinking about how many times I masturbated into that yawning green mouth, I reached down, grabbed my balls and pulled them tight, and that’s when I found the tumor.”
He adjusts his crotch a bit for effect. Jack gives an empathetic smirk before he can resist.
“I could feel it rolling around in my fingers,” Derek goes on. “Like a pebble stuck under a skinned knee. So I pinched a handful of skin and stretched the sack all out under that ray of morning sunlight. I was like Superman with X-ray vision, seeing right inside my body. I didn’t need all your bullshit fancy machines that you drive around in those trucks. I could see the veins radiating from this dark spot inside my very core, stuck in there like a bullet that had pierced a bat’s wing.”
Jack pulls away, wincing in disgust. He starts walking to see how far he’ll get.
More like Waiting For Godon’t, he thinks.
“I wasn’t sure if I was being punished for what I’d been doing,” Derek explains, standing up to follow. “Or maybe rewarded with this knowledge. Rumor has it that they send signals to the cell phones of sex offenders all day long to chemically castrate them. It’s in your pocket all day, you know? So I threw out my phone. Cracked it in half and threw it away for good. But the Flytrap showed me this shadow for a reason. It showed me that my seed was destined to die and I didn’t have much time left on this planet. That was a long time ago, though. Maybe I had more time than I thought!”
The Last Projector Page 43
