The wet autograph dog leaks a trickle of watery ink down my side, my leg, the inside of my arm.
And Mr. Bacardi says, "Take it." Holding the gold heart in my face, he says, "Look inside."
My fingers sticky with powdered sugar and doughnut jelly, I'm still holding the little pill Dan Banyan gave me, cupped in one hand, the drug for when I need to get my wiener hard. While I'm juggling the bouquet of roses, the wood pill, and the wet dog, my fingernails pry at the gold heart until it pops open. On the inside, a baby looks out, just a squashed wad of skin, bald, the lips puckered, wrinkled as the inflatable sex surrogate. Me. I'm this baby.
The heart still warm from Mr. Bacardi's throat. Slippery with his baby oil.
On the other inside sits a little pill.
Just a plain little pill. Inside the heart.
"Potassium cyanide," Mr. Bacardi says.
He says to hide it in the paper funnel of my flowers.
"Cassie's a born masochist," he says. "It's the greatest gift a son could give her…"
I don't know.
She wants it, he says. She begged him to bring it, even gave him her necklace to sneak it in here.
Mr. Bacardi says, "Say it's from Irwin, and she'll know."
I ask him, Irwin?
"That was me," he says. "It used to be my name."
He says to give it to her and she'll die and I'll walk out of here a rich dude. I'll have enough money, I won't need a family, I won't need friends. If you're rich enough, Mr. Bacardi says, you don't need anybody.
The baby inside, all wrinkled and lumpy. The smooth little pill.
What Cassie Wright didn't want versus what she does want.
What she threw away versus what she's asked for.
Mr. Bacardi says, "Your ma's nothing if not strong-minded. She wanted liposuction, I paid for it. She wanted boob implants, I paid. All that money to suck out fat and inject plastic."
The baby's picture, she's wore it around her neck for most of her life.
Mr. Bacardi says, "It was Cassie wanted to shoot a porn loop to escape her folks' house. Cassie asked could I score her something to help relax."
The baby's nose, my nose. The fat chin, my chin. The squinty eyes, mine.
My mom swallows this pill, maybe only bites down on it, and her muscles paralyze. She can't breathe on account of her diaphragm's stopped, and her skin turns blue. No pain or blood, and she's just dead.
My mom's just dead. This here's the last world-record gang-bang movie ever. She's a dead hero, and we all go into the history books.
"Added benefit," Mr. Bacardi says, "nobody has to follow the diseased teddy-bear dude." He says, "You'll be saving lives, kid."
All I need to do is hide the cyanide in my flowers, give her the flowers, and say they're from Irving.
"Irwin," says Mr. Bacardi.
I say we've got a big problem.
The wet autograph dog, it's printed the name Cloris Leachman on my side skin, only backwards. Next to that's printed "You mean the world to me," only in reverse.
"I swear," Mr. Bacardi says, "it's what she wants most."
That baby looking up at both of us.
And I say no. The problem is the light, the dim light down here. Cupped in the palm of my hand, the cyanide and the wood pill, I can't tell which is which. What's sex and what's death—I can't tell the difference.
I ask which one to give her.
And Mr. Bacardi leans in to look, both of us breathing hot, damp air into my open hand.
23. Mr. 137
The talent wrangler does her best to show me the door. A couple laughs, not two puffs on a cigarette after I ejaculate across Cassie Wright's lovely breasts, my sperm still warm and crawling around, and the wrangler's shoving a paper bag full of clothes into my arms. She's telling me to get dressed. Me, I'm telling Ms. Wright how moved I was by her performance as a struggling, unstoppable teacher yearning to make a difference among the disadvantaged students of a gritty inner-city school. She was inspired. Just inspired. Her character's vulnerability and determination, she was the best part of watching The Asshole Jungle.
Later released as How Reamed Was My Valley.
Later re-released as Inside Miss Jean Brodie.
Ms. Wright squealed. She actually squealed over the fact I knew the film. That I knew all her films, from Angels with Dirty Places to Sperms of Endearment.
Her favorite color is fuchsia. Her favorite scent: sandalwood. Ice cream: French vanilla. Pet peeve: shops that ask you to check your bags as you enter.
Sniffing my hair, she squealed again.
The two of us, we chatted about cotton sheets versus poly-cotton blends. We gossiped about Kate Hepburn, dyke or not? Ms. Wright says: Definitely. We nattered about our mothers. Through all our small talk, I'm pumping away, in her vagina, in her bottom, in her hand, between her breasts. Us having our little hen party, just yak-yak-yakking away, and my erection's going in and out, in and out.
The talent wrangler stands next to the bed, just off camera, holding a stopwatch in one hand.
Wouldn't you know it? Ms. Wright and I, we're barely into the subject of favorite diets when the wrangler presses the top of the watch with her thumb and says, "Time."
Next, I'm holding a bag of clothes, being herded toward an open door filled with sunlight. My briefs are still looped around my ankles, so I'm waddling, my erection swinging in front of me like a blind man's cane, and the talent wrangler has the nerve to say, "Thank you for coming.»
One shove from me standing in the alley, naked, my skin still hot from the set lights, I look in the bag and see an off-brand acrylic men's two-button rugby shirt with a one-piece collar and contrasting stripes, banded sleeves, and not the slightest hint of taper, and I put my foot down.
These are not my clothes. Yes, the bag's marked "137," my number, but my clothes, my shoes, Mr. Toto, they're all still back in the green room. The wrangler needs to let me backtrack. She doesn't let me go back and look, I tell the wrangler, and I'm calling the police. My bare foot tap-tap-tapping the concrete hallway one step from the alley, I wait.
And, looking at her watch, the wrangler says, "Okay." She says, "Fine." She sighs and says, "Come back and look."
At the top of the stairs, looking down on the few actors still waiting, I say, Gentlemen. Wearing only my briefs, bowing from the waist, I spread both arms and say, You are no longer looking at a perfect Kinsey Six.
Mr. Toto tucked under his arm, a potato chip stopped halfway to his mouth, the young actor 72 says, "Is she dead?"
Branch Bacardi says, "What was the point?" Tapping a finger on his forehead, he says, "They couldn't shoot your face. That means no publicity."
To draw out the moment, I take a step down the stairs. I take another step. On the monitors, Cassie Wright takes the hand of a deaf and blind actor. She folds his fingers into a pattern and presses his hand into her crotch, saying, "Water…" My favorite scene from The Miracle Sex Worker. With another step, I take another moment. A long pause of quiet as I stroll across the concrete to where Bacardi stands. Wordless, I nod to accept Mr. Toto from the young man.
Still silent, I smile and lift one hand to brush back the hair from my forehead, the skin revealed, and written across it: "How I loVe U. " inscribed and autographed by Cassie Wright.
To the young actor 72 I say, "Her own idea." Patting the fingers of one hand against my lips, I blow a kiss toward the stairs and the set, saying, "Your mother is a bona fide angel."