Euphoria burned out the crippled man’s head like a matchstick. Satan collapsed, and since he had no arms to break his fall, his head smashed into the hard floor with the full force of gravity, breaking his jaw and knocking out three teeth.
Five minutes later he was dead. Vampire Annie had closed and locked her door and was already shooting up the rest of his bag. And it was a big bag. She knew the cops wouldn’t even bother to ask any questions. Things like that happened all the time around there. The junkies had a saying: “If you overdose at Sixteenth and Mission, they don’t call an ambulance, they call a garbage truck.”
Satan’s corpse was as blue as a healthy vein. But he died with a smile on his face. Because Vampire Annie had fixed him. Right in the jugular. He’d gotten that shot he wanted, needed, so bad. It’s the only thing that gives even a dead junkie peace. Satan may have been fixed, but now he was permanently broken.
PART IV. Flowers of Romance
BRILEY BOY BY ROBERT MAILER ANDERSON
The Richmond
The first time Briley had his nose broken, he just laughed. And then, bracing himself for another surge of blood, dizziness, and memory, he let the skuzzy little bitch hit him again. Why not? He had been dodging his old man’s blows since he was old enough to see them coming, developed a tic as a toddler, twitched at birth, flinched in the womb. “That’s why the scrape doctor missed you,” Pop said, catching the flesh of his cheek, chin, side of neck, or temple. “Stand still and take it like a man!” But Briley never did. Bobbing and weaving. Skit. He had learned to become elusive, especially to himself. He didn’t stand in front of a mirror long enough to see his own reflection. It helped when he was stealing cars, scouting houses for a B &E, scoring drugs. Living with women who had only heard the word blow used as a figure of speech. Nobody got a good look at him. Not the slightest slanted-eye contact from his Chinese and white Russian neighbors in the outer Richmond or nod of recognition while grazing chips at Tommy’s Food and Yucatan, swiping day-old sweets from the biddies at Tbilisi Bakery, having a happy-hour heave-ho at Trad’r Sam’s in a backbooth marked Pago Pago. So now that the bridge of his nose had collapsed under the weight of her flattened palm, all he could do was spit blood and laugh.
He was happy she was the one. God knows she deserved the honor. He had hit her too many times to count, cuffings and jabs, sometimes straight on, knuckles tingling up the length of his arm into his teeth a metal taste that told him one more and you better ice them down-otherwise, you won’t be able to hold a crowbar tomorrow. Then he’d unzip his pants. Sometimes she would be unconscious. That made it better. Nothing to prove. Often he satisfied himself, wiping clean on the curve of her cleavage. Ripped her panties to feel the silk tear between his fingers. It kept her guessing when she came to. Deep down they both knew it didn’t make a difference either way. They weren’t the first. It would happen again. Nobody ever got it right. He couldn’t remember the last time they had embraced without a bruise. You can’t kiss a shadow or a memory, he had been told. It was hard enough to stare someone in the eyes and wish them dead.
Her eyes were like tunnels. No train coming. They had been blue once, but the beatings had darkened them as if they really were windows of the soul. And the speed they shot together sunk them into her head like a couple of billiard balls in the side pockets of a worn and tattered table. He didn’t enjoy looking at her. Nobody did. But when they had met, anonymous men at the Market Street Cinema stuffed money into her garter hoping to get a glimpse. She’d purse her lips and lean forward, bump and grind, making them feel special until the meter in her mind ran to zero, then it was onto the next toupee, leering Chinaman, aluminum-siding salesman. Twenty bought a Polaroid with her on your lap spreading herself, c-note for a nuzzle and a handjob, two and she flatbacked on a Murphy bed in her dressing room. Lately, there were no cash transactions.
Briley’s neck snapped back and his head hit the wall a double blow. Just like her to get something for nothing. Vision blurred. But he could see a flash of brass pulling away. She had loaded up for her Briley Boy-something more than a fistful of fingers. Fine. Let her have her fun. He was enjoying himself too. He spit a piece of his tongue onto the carpet in front of her like a cat offering up a gift from the garden. He continued laughing. Nothing was funnier. Not even their wedding.
She had said “I do” so many times nobody doubted her, regardless of the question. Saint Monica’s on Twenty-third and Geary wouldn’t take them. Neither would the Holy Virgin Cathedral, Joy of All Who Sorrow. No money for Vegas. So, Reno was obviously the place. Where else could she wear white? A ruffled rented tux, soon to be smeared lipstick. No veil. They stayed seven days at the Lucky Horseshoe until they were down to their last dime. Then she spun cherries for silver dollars in the parking lot. Hard luck. Jackpot. Enough for bus fare back to San Francisco. But she had developed a thing for a customer, some Detroit blizzard pimp giving her a tryout in the backseat of his snow-chained El Dorado. She didn’t want to leave. Briley convinced her. First with his fists, then with a hanger he heated over a Sterno can. Just like Dad used to do, across the ass so nobody could see the scars. She couldn’t sit still anyway. He bought two decks of playing cards and they each flipped solitaire in silence as drought-brown hills passed outside like legless camels. They rented a room above a nail salon on a treeless block back in the Richmond. Crumbling stucco and mold. They ate fog. The honeymoon was over.
Briley felt his leg splinter as she brought down her heel onto the inside of his knee. There was a strange pop, and it went goofy like a chicken leg. Wing Chun. He had paid for the lessons. Sammy Wong’s: laundry and self-defense. Dragon, tiger, lotus, monkey. Shirts: $1.29. Six kids and an amphetamine addict. He was certain she fucked them all; dragon, tiger, lotus, monkey, any way they wanted, pocketed the money and practiced evenings when he wasn’t around. Parlor tricks. If he could grab hold of her, he’d show her some real chop-socky. Not some Hong-Kong four-star double-bill. Americans had invented the bitch-slap. She wouldn’t forget it. Size is what mattered. Who wore the pants. Who swung the belt.
But Briley couldn’t move, and didn’t want to. He waved an arm in feeble defense of a lamp crashing across his shoulder. Ceramic explosion. Shards of clay cutting into his eyes, lids running red. Blood, not anger. Tiny helpless bursts. Just like the hamsters he’d had as a boy. Father foraging through the wire enclosure, hand full of shit and gnawed newspaper, coming up with a Vida Blue kick and a fur fastball. Splat. “That was because of you! Next time you’ll do as you’re told!” his old man would shout. Not likely. And the rodents multiplied like guilt, bad report cards, pornography, dirt under his fingernails. Dad left two alone: male and female. Breeding. He called their crap-covered coop the Garden of Eden, less like the Bible location and more like the strip club cross town where his mother was a “waitress.” Finally, Briley took the vermin to the toilet tank and watched them drown, whirlpooling away with a sudden suck. The stains stayed behind, above the bed, closet doors, wild ceiling caroms. Reminding him what he had done. No amount of scrubbing could make them come clean. Late at night, awake with one hand working his cock, he would stare at certain spots for hours, forming their faces, making sounds, having them do tricks. That’s when they became his pets. That’s when he named them.