She broke down, resting her head on my shoulder. Half a century of tears, grief, and sorrow seemed to pour right out of her. Jack walked in on the scene. Said
"I'm going outside for a smoke."
###
Jack had been right about the weight of the damned cat statuette. The thing had quite a bit of heft to it. Gilda stayed downstairs as I brought the Silver Whisker up to show her dad. She had confessed the whole plot to me … well, most of it, anyway, when her crying had quieted down. She had stolen the cat in the hope of keeping her dad alive just a little longer.
She so desperately wanted him to see that she was everything that Anne had been, maybe more. She had done everything else she could think of, yet she could never compete with Anne's memory. Gilda knew it was a crazy thing to do and doomed to fail as everything else had failed, but … What she had neglected to tell me was that she, not her father, had written the book that had won the Silver Whisker. I don't know exactly how I knew that. I just did.
When I entered the bedroom, silver cat in hand, K.T. Baum was dead. Apparently, he knew it all, too. I placed the statuette near his right hand and left.
I couldn't seem to find Gilda when I went back downstairs. I let myself out. I couldn't blame Gilda for wanting time alone. She had too many years of emptiness and self-deception to deal with in one night.
But Jack was gone too. When I stepped out into the cool black air of the Brooklyn night, all that remained of Jack Taylor on the planks of the wrap-around porch was a crushed cigarette butt and wisps of pungent cigarette smoke. Whoosh! The genie had gone.
"Grandpa Moe," I heard a little boy's voice coming out of the genie's smoke. "Grandpa Moe."
"Sssshhh, honey, Grandpa is very sick," I heard my daughter Sarah say, her voice cracking slightly. "He needs to rest."
"But-"
"No buts, Aaron. God, you're just like your Great Uncle Aaron, may he rest in peace."
"I'll take over, Sarah," I heard my kid sister Miriam say.
"Where's Jack?" I said, my throat dry, my voice thin as a hair. I had trouble focusing my eyes. I saw the world through heat waves coming off hot tar and it smelled like a hospital.
"Take it easy, Moe. Rest. You really need-"
"Miriam, for chrissakes! Where's Jack?"
"Who's Jack?"
"Jack! Jack Taylor. Where's Jack Taylor?"
"I'll be right back."
The door opened and closed. That much I could make out. Then it opened and closed again.
"He's asking for someone we don't know, someone none of us know," Miriam was near frantic.
"It might be the drugs," a man's voice explained. "It might be the cancer. At this point, it's impossible to know. Just sit with him and call the family in."
"Miriam," I called to her in a whisper."
"What is it, Moe?"
"No silver cats for me, okay?"
"Okay," she said, though only I understood.
Then I went to sleep.
Pearls
Draw a line to connecting the matching items.
Marilyn Monroe
Her favorite flavor
Leaving Las Vegas
Her favorite toy
Fuck
Her ambition
Pussy
Her favorite tragic figure
Pearls
Her favorite thing to do, feel and say
She would pull the string of pearls out of them one, two at a time. With each gentle tug, a moan, a sigh, a twitch-the quiver of an orchid as grains of pollen are removed. She loved the look of translucent white against wet pink. For her it was the feel, the friction. Finally, their muscles taut, pulsing with electricity, she would yank the remaining pearls out with a snap of the wrist. They would near explode as the twisted end loop was set free.
"Fuck me, fuck me hard!" she'd hear them scream, breathless, gasping for air, rubbing the wet pearls against their nipples. "Oh, fuck my pussy. Fuck it! Fuck it!"
It was the last voice she recalled, one of her clients screaming. Then the sun exploded with a burning, blinding light, a light so bright she could see through shut eyelids. But after the light came darkness. She dreamed of pearls in a sea of pink.
She woke up. Wasthesunup too? It was impossible to tell. The room was cool, the lights low. She felt like a bottle of chardonnay being brought down to the proper chill. She could not move. Was she dead? In the ME's ice box? The temperature was about right. But no, the refrigerator light pops off when the door closes. She knew that for a fact because her big sister had shoved her inside the big fridge her parents kept in the basement to store the extra food they never bought. Her sister had held the door shut while she sat there, a bundle of herself, cold and in the dark.
"Fuck you!" she had screamed at her sister when she was let out. It was the first time she had used the F word. She had thought it like a million bazillion times, but never said it. Like her daddy used to say, "You get arrested for what you do, not for what you think." Yeah, Daddy, like for coming into your little girls' room at night and fucking one while the other watched. Watching was harder, except the night her sister locked her in the fridge. She enjoyed watching that night. After her sister hung herself, she could not get over the shame of that enjoyment. There wasn't enough hot fucking water to wash that shame away.
She tried remembering her sister's name, her face. Nothing. Maybe she was dead. Fuck! This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Does everything just slowly slip away like a long greased rope between your fingers? Do the details of your life fall into the abyss, one aspect at a time? She was determined that this couldn't be death. She had a plan for her death and this was pretty far the fuck away from it.
Leaving Las Vegas was her ambition. She was gonna kill herself one fucking drink at a time, but better than in the movie. Nicolas Cage, the dumbass with that nasally fucking whine, did it like by the bottle. She guessed that was due to Hollywood time constraints. When you've only got ninety minutes to drink yourself to death and fuck Elisabeth Shue, scarred ass and all, you gotta do it by the bottle. She dreamed about fucking Elisabeth Shue sometimes. Sometimes when she was pulling the pearls out of her clients' cunts, she fantasized they were Elisabeth Shue. Death would taste like vodka and pussy, Elisabeth Shue's pussy.
Her sister hanging herself was bullshit. Ninety minutes! It was over in like ninety fucking nano seconds. Coroner said she snapped her neck. What was that all about? You live how ever many years, endure all the shit life hands you and then snap, crackle, pop, you're dead!
Fuck that, big sister! No, she was going to enjoy her own dying. She'd surf the borderline and when she felt she was losing her looks and that she had become sufficiently tragic-See Monroe, Marilyn aka Baker, Norma Jean-she'd take that last drink. Her liver would do the big bang; her heart would explode; her face would suck into itself. For fuck's sake, it would be a glorious death. Though she was curious. She had heard that some men, when they were hanged, died with huge erections. When she got to the other side, she'd ask her sister, "Did you come?"
But still, she couldn't remember her goddamned sister's name. Kinda makes for an awkward reunion in hell when you can't remember your fucking sister's name. Don'tI know you from somewhere? It's right on the tip of my tongue. Wouldn't cut it. You were, even in hell, expected to remember your siblings. Hey, fuck on a bike, maybe not. Maybe that's what hell was all about, forgetting. Nah, it wouldn't be that easy. Hell would look and feel like her father's cock.