In Extremis

by John Shirley

  “I would and I fucking could say no,” Prissy said, when they’d sat around the living room of the crib eating Mu Shu Pork and Szechuan Beef from cartons. “If the guy gets a heart attack or something . . . Sure I’d say no to that. I could be fucking prosecuted.”

  “Try saying no to three hundred dollar tips.”

  “Yeah well that paper bag he takes the money out of—you know who’s money that is. Just keep that in mind . . .”

  Janet had seven thousand dollars put away in her money market account. If she got another thirteen grand or so, she would get matching funds from the Small Business Administration, open her own business. Hair cutting and nails parlor. Her own nails were an inch and a half long, beginning to curl, and they had cat-eyes in sequins on them. They were really gorgeously lacquered and shaped, sweetly done. She and Prissy did each other’s nails after work.

  Harry was thrashing under her. He still didn’t give the signal.

  She didn’t take drugs anymore. She saved her money so she could get out of the crib. She didn’t like the business now, though some of the guys were pretty nice; she’d never more than sort-of liked this business anyway. Where could it take you? She wanted to be going somewhere. And who was going to marry her, except some pimp asshole, and she hated pimps, fucking hated them, especially the ones who claimed they weren’t pimps. And she did want to get married, and not to a loser like her last boyfriend. She wanted to have kids: she’d made up her mind on that when she’d turned twenty-nine. Pretty soon she’d be thirty . . .

  It was this guy Harry’s job to collect money from bookies in the area, for the Pasta Potentates, and Harry always just stuffed the money in a paper bag. Harry said if he put it in a briefcase or even a duffel it’d look like he was carrying money. He was skimming, though, she knew that, because that was where the tips came from, right from that paper bag. He was skimming from That Thing Of Theirs, and one of these days, if he didn’t die right here playing “strangle”, the mob would kill him anyway.

  If she tightened it another notch, and just held on, she could take the money in that paper bag. It was something to consider. The guy was headed for an early grave any way you looked at it. They’d kill him sure, for dipping into the collections. And she was pretty sure he was careful to let no one know he came here. He was married, for one thing; for another, if you stop at a whorehouse after collecting the mob’s money, they’ll figure you’re spending their money on that whore. Stands to reason.

  She was still choking him. And he was clutching the side of the bed, his knuckles white, his fingers clenching on the fabric; loosening a little; clenching. His face was swollen, patchy-red. He was making noises like that rabbit had made . . .

  She’d been a little girl, about ten. Her adoptive aunt had brought her a rabbit for Easter, the French kind with the floppy ears. One time she caught it humping her stuffed toys. It’d made hissing sounds, which sounded weird coming from a rabbit, as it humped her teddy bear, and she’d slapped it away from the bear in sheer disgust and it responded to that by jumping onto her hand, clamping onto her wrist, the way a dog will clamp onto your leg—and the rabbit began to fuck her hand, it was a little fuck-animal now, hissing and chugging away, and not a rabbit anymore, and it was fucking her hand with its little wet pencilly thing, those snaky sounds getting louder as she tried to claw it away from her, and then it . . . Prissy hadn’t believed it when she’d told this to her, but it was true . . . it came in her palm, wet warm gunk splashing down her wrist and she’d screamed and flung the rabbit away so it smacked against the wall over her bed and it’s neck broke and it died. She burst into tears and Amy her adoptive mom came in and found her with a dead rabbit on the bed and cum on her hands and she decided in her twisted red-haired head that Janet had deliberately jacked off the rabbit and killed it . . .

  (Harry’s eyes were going pinpoint, his tongue was sticking out).

  The radio was playing the “Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel. Hello darkness, my old friend. It sounded like Paul Simon was singing from under the bed. Are you under there, Paul?

  Harry, the trick, was convulsing, but he hadn’t given the loosen signal. If he failed to give it to her and he got all blue, she was supposed to stop on her own. His thing thrashed inside her, not big enough to fill her, or any woman; it was almost like a clapper in a bell.

  Ding dong, Harry, ding dong, she thought.

  He was changing colors . . .

  Janet heard a guy moan from Room Two. That albino Jediah, that Prissy did. He’s pretty weird, but he’s not as weird as Strangle-Me Harry, and Jediah pays cold cash in advance, was all she’d say about him. Prissy got him to orgasm in just about twelve minutes. Generally, payment was for one hour, or to orgasm—and the tricks always had the orgasm before fifteen minutes or so, except really old guys. And a lot of the old guys were just as happy to spend half the time talking and playing with a girl’s tits, which was easy work.

  Her and Prissy, what a team. Prissy’d paid her home phone bill, once, without telling her, when she’d had that infection and couldn’t work for a month. “I could have taken it out of my savings,” she’d told Prissy, when she’d figured it out.

  “Don’t you ever touch those savings, Janet, you dumb bunny,” Prissy said. If she liked you, she called you dumb bunny.

  He was making that hiss as he fucked at her (you couldn’t call it fucking, it was more like fucking at), hissing with the itty bitty increments of air he could get . . . less and less air.

  An unfamiliar feeling came over her as she looked at him, then; as she looked at her hands, aching but not really tired, and her strong forearms: she worked out. And her strong thighs straddling him, pinioning him.

  She didn’t feel like she was serving him, any more, in that moment. Janet felt a kind of current in her, a hot good current, and it gave her the feeling of being in control and it was something she hadn’t felt quite like that before.

  I mean, in a way, Janet thought, you were always in control of tricks, if you knew what you were doing. You had strict rules, you led them around by the dick in a way; you made them take a shower first—you were polite about it, but you insisted—and you made them state categorically they are not undercover police, no entrapment please, and most of all you made them ejaculate in under the time they had paid for so you could get rid of them and bring in the next guy or take a break if you didn’t have another guy right then. Breaks were important.

  He was turning seriously blue now.

  Well. Let’s think about this. There might be as much as $20,000 in that paper bag of his.

  That Thing of Theirs, the Pasta Potentates, they wouldn’t know where he was. Prissy would get her back on this, and the two of them could wait till two in the morning, dress his body, take him up to the roof, carry his body over two or three building roofs, drop him into the alley, make it look like he was robbed there.

  He was shaking, really shaking now, his glasses half flopped off—he was making the sign to stop strangling him. So she had to decide—had to decide right now—

  She stood a good chance of getting away with it, if she did it right. (He was making the sign more urgently). But then, she’d have to live with it. Because wherever you go, hey, there you are.

  That was really not too easy for Janet to imagine, living with something like that . . .

  With strangling this ugly bastard to death. Just the memory of it. Nasty. The two of them naked and sweating, the blueness spreading down to his fingertips . . .

  But there was that good feeling—that sensation in her arms, her whole body. All of her connected together in one big purpose. Sweat running down her tits to tremble on the nipples with as he thrashed under her . . .

  Harry was clutching at her wrists now. She’d never killed anyone before—was she really going to do it now? She hadn’t felt it was genuinely in her to really go through with killing, though, except in self-defense. But now Janet felt she could do it. She wasn’t sure if she would do it—
but—

  She realized that yeah—she could do it.

  She really was capable of killing him. It was amazing to her. Her hands trembled, pulling the taut cords tighter.

  If she didn’t let him go right away, and if she didn’t have the nerve to go through with it, he’d know she had thought about killing him, and who knew what he’d do? He had always been kind of sweet, really, never a hint of being violent toward her, and he’d sounded sort of pathetic and sad when he’d told her that his mother had punished him by sitting on him and strangling him. Claimed it was the only kind of embrace he’d ever got from his mom. I mean, you hear something like that, you feel like you’re a step too far into somebody’s life, and like it or not you feel what they feel a little, if you can feel anything at all. Maybe because it was something that had happened when he was a kid.

  And if you thought of him as a kid it was harder to hold him at a distance. Harder to kill him.

  But it was almost done. One notch tighter. Tighter. Just a little. Then it’d be all over.

  Paul Simon was just finishing singing the “Sounds of Silence.”

  Harry had a look in his eyes like he was fighting his own ecstasy . . . Like he was only half resisting . . .

  Janet could almost see the specks in front of his eyes that he must be seeing, the pretty starbursts . . .

  He wasn’t fighting all that hard. See there? Part of him wanted it. Wanted her to go all the way. It might be the ultimate high for him, dying this way, like that guy in the band INXS (and what a waste that had been compared to this jerk-wad Harry), like David Carradine—a legendary way to go, and Harry was digging it: even as he thrashed under her, his dick was ding-donging in her, and Janet thought she felt his semen squirt—she felt it in his dick’s spasm, not through the condom—and in her mind what she saw jetting was blood and not sperm, he was ejaculating blood as she strangled him—the straps almost cutting into his throat, making the veins on his neck stand out purple.

  Wanting it: Janet could see it in his eyes. Okay maybe not completely wanting it—but hell, if deep down he wanted it, well then, that was something she could live with. And eventually she’d learn to put it out of her mind no matter what.

  He was flapping at her with his hands, weakly, now, and there was something babyish about the motion, and that thought brought an image to her mind . . .

  She tried not to see it, but an image of this jerk-wad as a small boy, being choked by his mother, came into her mind’s eye, and Janet’s will stammered and her hands relaxed a little—and he thrashed like a bronco and threw her off him.

  Janet fell onto her side, off the bed, and he clawed the straps away from his throat. They’d dug in and left deep red marks. Encircling rings of purple were forming. He choked and sputtered, “You bitch, you fucking bitch,” at least that’s what she thought he was saying, it was hard to make it out. “You failed, you stopped.” That she heard clearly, though it came out in a squeak, and she stared at him in surprise, thinking she ought to yell for Prissy but feeling disoriented, stumbling on some inner ledge.

  “You failed, bitch,” he said and lunged at her, throwing himself down onto her, the strap now wound around his right hand, his left pinning her to the floor by her throat, banging her head on the wood under the carpet. She tried to yell but he’d cut off her wind, his arm straight, his strong hand and the weight of his upper body squeezing her throat. She flailed her legs, trying to bang the radio or something, make enough noise to summon help. Couldn’t hit anything but the floor with thumps that just weren’t very loud.

  Harry was still coughing and choking as he tried to choke her air out, and he was drooling a little, blood mixed with drool dripping on her face as he squeezed her some and then squeezed harder.

  Maybe it would be enough for him to punish her, and he’d let her go . . .

  But as if in answer to that thought, he pressed harder.

  By now Prissy was across the apartment in the living room, watching TV while she waited for her next appointment, and even if she did hear the thumping she’d ignore it because they always thrashed and banged in here, during Harry’s appointment, it was part of Harry’s thing to thrash around and there was always some noise. Prissy wouldn’t be coming to save her.

  You’re going to have to survive this on your own, girl.

  Janet rallied all her strength and whiplashed her body—and he lost his grip and rocked back, flailing for balance. She lurched and twisted left, so he fell from her, and she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the leather strap and twisted it around his neck from the side, while he was in profile to her—trying to get his balance—and she tightened, and tried to yell for Prissy, but her throat was still tight and gummy and wouldn’t make more than a squeak.

  The two of them were on their knees, she was facing him but turned partly to one side, and he tried to slug at her but couldn’t hit her directly at this angle. She’d gotten the straps in the ruts in his neck that she’d made earlier and with just another notch tighter she could—

  He jabbed an elbow hard into her gut just below her ribcage, and all the air burst from her mouth like from a gashed bicycle tire, and her grip loosened and he wrenched free and slugged her in the side of the face, and she fell over, still not able to make a sound. Then he twisted the strap—the strap!—around her neck again and she could feel the taut, concentrated finality of the grip as he tightened it. He was taking no chances, he was focused this time.

  She tried to kick but she had no air in her at all after having it knocked out of her and she was already dizzy and weak. Stars burst in front of her eyes, prickles in her hands and feet, paths of prickling nothingness traveled from her extremities to meet in her heart. His glasses were hanging from one ear and she saw his gaping face, white and blotchy red, filling her vision, and she thought oh no, it’s the last thing I’ll ever see, oh no, falling into eternity with his fucking ugly pan . . . She tried to claw at his face but her hands were like the hands of blow-up sex dolls, soft clubs without strength.

  The darkness closed in like a tightening circle, the dark circle tightening, getting smaller and smaller, making her smaller inside it. She was almost entirely blind—the last thing she’d see would be the sparkles, the flashes, and not his face . . . She heard a man’s voice on a radio commercial saying, “WE’VE GOT FIVE HUNDRED, RIGHT THAT’S FIVE HUNDRED GUITARS TO GET RID OF, GREAT BRAND NAME GUITARS AT THE JERSEY CITY GUITARLAND DISCOUNT CENTER! WE’VE GOT AMPS, WE’VE GOT DRUMS, WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO WALK IT INSTEAD OF TALK IT! THIS IS ONE CHANCE AND ONE CHANCE ONLY CAUSE THERE’LL NEVER BE A SALE LIKE THIS ONE . . .” The voice was getting smaller. “At Guitarland in Jersey City . . . take the . . . expressway to . . . exit to . . . but . . . now because . . . again . . . not again . . .” The radio was gone. White noise took its place. Something was about to pop . . .

  Then there was a roaring in her ears and air burst painfully into her lungs and there was a fluttering in the darkness and the fluttering became light and shapes. She could see again.

  She saw Prissy standing over Harry, who was on his knees, digging with weakening fingers at the radio cord she was tightening around his neck. Prissy worked out too, and her muscular forearms trembled but held on firm, and she’d got the strap in the same ruts and there was blood brimming dark red from his mouth and he almost smiled but couldn’t . . .

  His arms flailed, flailed . . . and then he died all of a sudden, just going limp, and it wasn’t faking either, it was so real, you could just see the life fly out of him. Maybe something had burst in his brain.

  Prissy let him drop and kicked him once, not very hard.

  “Asshole.” She was breathing hard but seemed calm. “Janet? You okay, ya dumb bunny?”

  She came over to help Janet stand. Janet could only croak the words out, but at least she could breathe. “I’m . . . okay. Be all right.”

  “’Kay.” Prissy was looking around for something. She found the brown paper bag jammed into one sleeve of Harr
y’s coat. She pulled it out, dumped the money on the bed. It was a lot of money.

  “Well, all right. We open a business. I’ll do the hair, you do the nails. Or we’ll just hire people. What you want to do with his body?”

  TEN THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR

  In this fickle world . . .

  In this coy and cloying and catastrophic world . . .

  In this, the best—can it be true?—of all possible worlds . . .

  One must butter one’s bread on the sunny side of the street. One must keep a stiff lower grip. One must . . .

  One must remember: there are things to be thankful for. We have so much to be grateful, to be thankful for.

  Here are ten things to be thankful for.

  Be thankful that you are not strolling through a park on a pretty spring day, minding your own mind, and thinking about which electives to take, or whether or not to call the corporate head-hunter back, when you find that you have to pee, you have to pee badly and there’s nowhere to go within a quarter mile, and it’s a big park, a bushy park, and you’ve taken that liberty in the park’s bushes before, and you enjoy the occasional outdoors pee, so you step off the path and pee off an embankment, through some ferns, watching the fronds bob with the impact of the stream, and you finish and turn and see two meth-heads standing there blocking your way and they tell you that you’ve just peed on their home, their mattresses, because there’s a tweaker encampment under the embankment, and you whine that you hadn’t seen anything down there, but it’s no good and you try to feint to the left and dart to the right but they are used to people trying to dodge past, and one of them grabs you and so does his smell, the smell of a whole jail-cell of people in one man, and you can see the lice squirm in his beard an inch from your face as he bear-hugs you, and you can look into his eyes, one of them skyblue and the other the color of phlegm; and the second guy who’s lean and blue with tattoos from the waist up, he kicks you at the base of the spine again and again and a third and fourth time as you try to scream but the bear-hugger stuffs his beard in your mouth, with a strangely high-pitched giggle, as you struggle, amazed not at his strength but at your own feebleness, and the tattooed one gives you another stiff and practiced steel-toed kick; you hear the meaningful crack of your spine, feel pain like a picture of jagged radiating three-dimensional arrows made of rusty iron, pain with weight, and the bearded one falls on you as you crumple and there’s more cracking and crackling as you hit the hard ground of the ravine’s lip and your head is hanging over the edge of the embankment, and the other guy grabs onto your neck and jumps off into the ravine, and that feeling is like a spinpainting with the colors black and green, and your vertebrae part ways as he swings from your head and neck as the other guy, drooling with laughter, holds onto your ankles and the vertebrae pull farther apart and you remember when you were in kindergarten you drew a picture of a bear jumping over a fence only no one could make out what it was you’d drawn. Now other tramps come laughing, hooting, to swing, down below, on your head and neck and the vertebrae part completely and when they get bored they kick your body like a bean bag amazed that you’re still alive, but you’re not alive for long. Be grateful that isn’t happening to you.