We're afterward now. We're standing in the alley, after the paramedics asked Sheila was there any next-of-kin? Any family to be notified?
This is after Sheila shook her head no. White flakes drifting off her hair, small as ashes from a fire, and she told them, "Nobody. The pig had no one."
Mr. Bacardi had nobody.
It's after we left the Dan Banyan guy in the basement, him getting dressed but wearing his shirt inside out. Feeling the buttons, he said, "For our reality show, how about calling it The Blonde Leading the Blind?" He pulled his pants on backward, then rightward. Then, fishing a phone out of his pants pocket, Dan Banyan punched speed-dial, and when somebody answered he says not to send the escort. Everything's over. The old, flabby guy they were sending, he's not needed.
The job is done.
After the Dan Banyan guy calls someone else to say yes, yes, yes to some emergency hair transplants. After he calls a restaurant to reserve a table for him and Miss Wright, for tonight.
Just Sheila and me stand, alone in the alley, the sun is setting on the other side of the building. Those sunset colors, red and yellow as a fire burning, on the other side of everywhere. Sheila's fingers flick the money back and forth between her hands, her mouth counting, ". fifty, seventy, a hundred twenty, a hundred seventy…" The money coming to $560 in her right hand. Then the same in her left.
Don't worry, I tell her. She can still hate her mom.
And Sheila counts the bills again, saying, "Thanks." She wipes her eyes with a twenty-dollar bill. She blows her nose on a fifty and says, "You smell meat cooking?"
I ask, is she going to poison me?
"Don't you know?" Sheila says, "The damaged love the damaged."
Cyanide and sugar. Poison and antidote. Like maybe we balance each other out.
I don't know. But this moment, standing with her in the alley, outside the stage door, the number «72» still going down my arm, waiting to do what's next, this moment feels like enough.
The ambulance guys still inside, chest-massaging the dead body of Mr. Bacardi. Sticking him with big needles full of some cure. His eyes squeezed shut from the huge smile his dead mouth is doing.
And Sheila says, "Wait." Half the money in each hand, she stops counting. She looks at the closed metal door we just came out. The door shut behind us. After the lock clicked, after everything's done. Sheila leans, twisting her head sideways until her ear presses to the door. She puts her nose to the lock and sniffs—her nostrils reaching for the keyhole and sniffing, hard. One hand, clenched full of money, reaches to tug the handle. Tugs harder. Her other hand, fisted around the other money, she knocks on the metal door. Knocks louder. Tugs harder. Sheila shoves both hands at me, saying, "Hold this crap a minute."
A little, little smell of meat smoke. Barbecue.
The red outline of my cross, the one pressed off my chest, fading on her cheek.
It's after she pushes all the cash into my hands Sheila starts really screaming, slapping and kicking the door, then tugging the handle with both hands.
34. Mr. 137
On the film set, the emergency paramedics pound on the shaved chest of Branch Bacardi, the latex of their gloves sticking, then peeling off with a tearing sound, their latex palms stained brown with bronzer, revealing Bacardi's dead blue skin. Their hands punching and pumping Bacardi's chest, his red, dark-red nipple blood spots their gloves. The razor cut, his shaved-off nipple no longer leaking blood.
With the cameraman leaning close, the paramedics sweating, the sides of their shirts, from sleeve to belt, their white uniforms soaked dark gray with sweat, Cassie Wright says, "Are you getting this?" The production stills-photographer shooting coverage, flash after flash from every angle, washing everything in bursts of strobe that leave us blind. Blinking. Breathing the hot air, heavy with sweat and perfume and sperm.
At the same time, Cassie squats over Bacardi's hips, sitting on the stubble of his shaved pubic hair. With both hands planted on her knees, she pushes down to raise herself. Half standing, she slams her hips down again, but not too fast, not so fast you can't see Bacardi's stiff blue erection disappearing inside her.
Even dead, that's a big dick.
The Goldilocks of dildos. Battery-powered or manually operated. Dead as the pink rubber version under my bed. As any holy relic in a cathedral. Stiff as the shrink-wrapped rows for sale in adult toy stores. Now a collectors' item. An antique.
Cassie Wright lifts her hips and slams them down, the flash of blue, lifeless dick appearing and disappearing, and she says, "Upstage me. you prick piece of shit." Both of them drenched in sweat. She pounds her pussy down, snarling, "You stole my biggest scene, you rat bastard." Her eyes washing tears down both cheeks, the runoff of eyeliner and mascara tracing the spidery wrinkles from her eyes to her chin, her face shattered by the network of branching black cracks.
One paramedic squeezes clear jelly from a tube, smears the jelly onto a little catcher's mitt. A small white mitt. Then the paramedic rubs the mitt against another little mitt, smearing the clear jelly between them. Wires dangle from both little mitts, trailing to a box where a red light glows.
The paramedic smearing jelly, he says, "Clear!"
The other paramedic leans back, away, not touching Bacardi.
The catcher's mitts, really cardiac paddles. A heart defibrillator. A billion volts of electricity, ready to shock Bacardi back to life.
The paramedic holding the cardiac paddles, he shouts, "Clear, lady!" into Cassie's broken, weeping face.
And Cassie stands until the fat blue erection is their only link. That dick their only connection. Until the fat head of it pops free of her dripping labia. The stiff blue dick still reaching out, stretching straight up to touch her as she pulls away.
The paramedic slams both cardiac paddles on Bacardi's sagging, sweating chest, and Bacardi's spine arcs from the current pumped into him. The muscles of his arms and legs swell, defined, etched and cut, his skin hard and tight. In that jolt, Bacardi looking young again, trim and tan, smooth and smiling. His teeth shining, white. His eyes shocked wide open. The photographer's flash and the spark of paramedic lightning turning Bacardi into a buff Frankenstein's monster.
And in that flash, Cassie Wright looks down at Branch Bacardi restored to his prime, young the way they'd both been young. His perfect comeback.
Could be it was suicide, could be her tired knees simply gave out.
The gesture was so Romeo and Juliet. But, wouldn't you know it.
It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.
With the billion volts of power still pulsing into Bacardi. the cameras rolling. Cassie Wright impales herself on his high-voltage, electric-chair, cattle-prod dick of death.
35. Sheila
Cardiac defibrillators set above 450 joules will leave contact burns. The paddles can scorch a patient's chest. Any metal jewelry can arc, blazing hot for an instant. Earrings or necklaces. On Branch Bacardi's sagging pecs, the two round red welts from the paddles could be cartoon nipples. Shiny new aureolas scarred into his chest. Ms. Wright's heart-shaped locket so hot it's burned into her chest. Branded Ms. Wright with a tiny heart. Both Bacardi's new nipples and Ms. Wright's heart still smoking. The locket's sprung open, the gold turned black, the baby picture, inside, curled and charred in a puff of smoke.
That picture of newborn baby me—a flash, a flame, and gone—burned to ash.
Staring down at Branch Bacardi, one paramedic wad-wanker says, "Good thing, or there's no way we'd get a boner that big zipped inside any body bag."
"Forget that," says the other paramedic pud-puller. "That monster wouldn't fit inside a closed casket."