This is wrong, I say. So fucking wrong.
It will be over soon, says Molly.
I sink back and yes there is rage in me but not enough. Pale rain clouds faraway and they may not get here anytime soon. They may pass by, they may fade away. I remember nothing but ailments. Impatience, affliction, and morbid restlessness. I cut my hair last night and saw your face. I saw the uselessness of the organism, the sequence of maladies. Disorder of the stomach and love letters amount to threads. The imperfection. The difficulty in forming ordinary vowel sounds. The sleeve of the female engages threads of the male. This is the hum of empty space. This is a photograph of a boy no longer a boy. Please, don’t. Don’t interrupt me. Badly drawn stick figures and the voice of another is like a forgotten blue T-shirt on the floor. He came inside me and said he didn’t mean to. This room has such poor light. Why did you buy an orchid of all things. Because you were not home. Because the phone just rings.
The light touch of rose petals on my shoulder.
I am asleep, or nearly so. I’m dreaming in my own voice. This can’t be good for anybody. Molly has turned the light off and she lies half-naked beside me, not quite touching me. But I can feel her breath on my skin and the rose petals might have been her lips. The television is still on and I am grateful, because the silence can be too much to bear. I might have been dreaming but I thought I heard the rest of the news. The sports, the weather. Partly cloudy tomorrow. Partly, partly. Uncommonly hot. A train wreck, brutal traffic. Power lines down. Forest fires and earthquake weather. Followed by a story about a monkey. A monkey has apparently escaped from the Oakland Zoo. A three-year-old ring-tailed lemur by the name of Casper.
And then in the dark hours, the following conversation. Awake or dreaming. Drunk and still dreaming and who is speaking I can’t say.
He could be mine. He’s the right age, anyway. And he does look like me.
Are you talking to yourself?
But a lot of guys look like me. I have an ordinary face and god knows who else she was fucking.
Who.
The whore with the ruined face.
Jude, you mean.
You’re not the father. You’re dreaming.
I’m not dreaming.
Wake up. Please wake up.
I could teach him to ride a bike, to throw a baseball. I could buy a new car, a family car. I could buy a big American car with airbags and we could take him fishing. I can see the three of us in a little boat, laughing and eating sandwiches on white bread.
Three people in a family car doesn’t make a family.
But it looks real. It looks like a family.
Do you even know how to fish?
Hah. I could teach him to be a fisher of men.
Who am I speaking to?
Disconnected. Drunk and still dreaming.
I wake up and my chest is slick with sweat. Molly snores softly beside me and there’s no way I’m going back to sleep right now. I get up and pull on a pair of jeans. The clock says four a.m. but that means nothing. It would be useful, though, to explore the house a little during the wee hours. Maybe I can find something to eat in the kitchen.
I check on the boy first. He sleeps in a fierce ball, one corner of his pillow clutched in his fist. His face is peaceful, his cheeks rosy. I can see his eyes flickering behind their almost transparent lids. I touch his hair and move on.
I turn the corner into the kitchen and stop when I hear voices. Jeremy and Daphne are in there, making out like teenagers. Which they are, basically. Jeremy sits in a wooden chair and she straddles his lap. Her tank top is pushed up and I catch a very brief glimpse of her breasts by moonlight and they are still amazing. Jeremy is whispering sweetly into her ear and she is stroking his hair. I slip away without them noticing me and I find myself smiling. For some reason, I feel like the world might still be okay.
I drift down to the Lizard Room and just being in there gives me the creeps. The televisions are blank and lifeless and I am tempted to screw around with the controls to see if I can find anything on the monitors. But this idea makes me uncomfortable, like the smell of vomit. And I know that I would fuck something up and then Miller would know I was in here. Then I notice a flicker of green lights coming from a cabinet door that hangs open. I shrug and take a look inside to find stereo equipment. The green light is coming from the digital meter that indicates the recording levels. I don’t hear anything, though. I adjust the volume and fiddle with various controls and I get nothing. I find a pair of small headphones and put them on and Jude’s voice fills my head. I sink into crash position, hands over my ears.
Jude- Don’t fucking touch me. I don’t want to be touched right now.
Miller- You’re pathetic. You must be the only narcissist on the planet with a face that would make children run away screaming.
Jude- You can’t hurt me. You can’t hurt me.
Miller- I don’t want to.
Jude- You’re such a liar.
Miller- What do you think Poe is doing downstairs, with Molly? Do you think he’s fucked her yet?
Jude- Doesn’t matter. His heart is his problem.
Miller- For now, anyway.
Jude- He won’t let you do it, you know.
Miller- What?
Jude- He won’t let you kill that boy.
Miller- I’m writing this picture. He’s got no control.
Jude- Believe me or not. I don’t care.
Miller- What about you? Do you think he will let me kill you?
Jude- I don’t know. He might have no choice.
Miller- Because I will, baby. I will break you in half.
Forever, it seems. I wait in the dark forever but she never answers him.
twenty-eight.
MORNING FINDS YOU, NEVER FAILS. I sit on the porch with a mug of black coffee laced with Irish whiskey. Miller may be a bastard, but he keeps a very respectable liquor cabinet. It’s early yet and the sky is white with fine threads of pink, like quartz. I light a cigarette and turn my attention to the scene unfolding in the driveway before me.
Jeremy and Daphne are in the back seat of the silver Mustang. Jeremy is naked. Daphne wears a bright red bra, and from what I can tell, nothing else. They are fighting, or fucking. It’s violent, whatever you choose to call it. The car is trembling. Huck is crouched low on the driver’s side, filming them through the open window.
I can see my reflection in the car window, the white sky endless behind me and superimposed upon my reflection hangs one of Daphne’s skinny legs, a pale yellow question mark dangling over the front seat. Jeremy’s dark shoulders, lunging. Now the sound of masculine grunting and a low, whining scream that must be Daphne achieving orgasm. Or Daphne’s dramatic portrayal of Daphne achieving orgasm.
Miller comes out onto the porch, his face sliced open by a hard little smile.
Do you mind telling me what’s going on? he says.
I glance at him, amused. Looks like Jeremy and Daphne are shooting a love scene.
Was this your idea?
Nah. I came out to have a cigarette and Jeremy said he needs me to be his brother. His character just got out of jail or something. And I’m not too happy to see him.
His character? says Miller.
Yeah. Jeremy says it will crank the tension up a notch.
This character of his, says Miller. He’s meant to be your brother?
I know. He doesn’t look much like me, I say.
Miller scowls. Yeah. He’s too good-looking.
That’s true, I say.
And Jeremy wrote this scene?
He conceived it. The dialogue will be improvised, apparently.
Miller is so irritated that his mouth opens and his lips twist speechless in the breeze and this amuses the hell out of me but I don’t get a chance to enjoy it as there is a sudden flash of gray and black fur cutting across my peripheral vision and out of nowhere there is a monkey crouched on the hood of the Mustang, a ring-tailed lemur idly chewing on one long black finger. This can only be Casper, the fugitive monkey. I open my mouth, then close it. My only coherent thought is that the monkey is probably not safe here.