Stop.
It’s not like you’re some emotional rock, either. My work is fucking hard and you can’t even listen to me–
Will you just stop please.
My sister says your lack of engagement is a form of emotional abuse. I’m starting to think–
Let me tell you something. Your sister does not give a FUCK about you or anything else that isn’t her. I don’t know what the fuck, she’s… abuse? Abuse??
Don’t talk about her like that.
No, it’s bullshit. She read about some new form of “abuse” on the internet and she thought: how can I get Astrid to move out so I can split the rent. She wants more fucking booze money. She does not give a fuck, she is using you–
Don’t talk about her– you don’t know anything about her.
I know everything I need to know and I know this is another fucking bullshit way she figured out to use you, so don’t start quoting her to me about– about the FUCKING SOAP. Jesus.
At least she listens to me.
FOR CHRIST’S FUCKING SAKE, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU? She is a WHORE–
Don’t say that.
You know what? You’re a fucking whore too. You act like I’m some fucking bum who’s lucky to have you. I’ve been out of work THREE WEEKS, it’s not the god damn Great Depression. You were a WHORE. You came from NOTHING. You FUCKED OLD MEN for MONEY. You are LUCKY that ANYONE would fucking have you. And you bite my FUCKING head off about the… FUCKING… SOAP!
She was on him before he knew what was happening. She had a lucky hit, the chef’s knife went right under his ribs. It felt hot. He tried to breath but but only got half full; on his left side the air was hissing out of a wet hole and it felt like someone was standing on his chest in boots. He was sitting now. The room moved like when you’d had too many drinks and woke up on the couch in your clothes, trying to lift your head off the pillow. Moving like a boat. Then he was lying down. He was shaking but couldn’t feel it so much anymore. When he was a boy he saw a mother cat get run over, her body scissoring frantically in the street as the kittens looked on from the sidewalk. He must be scissoring like that. The floor was warm.
There was a lot of blood. Every book where someone stabs someone, she thought, they always remarked: so much blood. It was always more than they expected. But she was able to form a dam with some dish towels to pool it up, keep it on the tile and off the carpet. Her hands were shaking. She had read about this too. Everything was going down exactly as described in countless novels about murder. His blood was all over her forearms. If she could get his body on a dolly she could get in in the trunk, and she could burn it down to something manageable out behind the dump after work. After a day or two she would call the police and say he’d disappeared. Were there any problems in the home, they would ask. Did he have issues with drinking or drugs. Yes and yes. Eventually they would give up. He probably skipped town and went to Mexico. It happens all the time.
She would only be a little late. She went back into the bathroom to check on herself. No bruises, no scratches. Everything looked fine, except the blood. Fortunately the soap was sitting on top of the sink.
Can’t Live with ’Em, Can’t Live without ’Em
This is what I remember. I went back in to tell the crazy black chick with the fake blue eyes: come on, just give us a fucking ride two exits up the freeway. You promised you would drive us back, I said. I knew the whole time she would Welsh but I thought she could be reasoned with. She could not. She got angry, very angry, she was yelling at me to get the fuck out of the house and take that crazy ass bitch with you and I said all right, all right. And I’m pretty sure she popped me one. I have no marks on me but I remember laughing and telling her that if she was going to hit me she ought to put some body into it. When in fact it hurt, she had put plenty of body into it. She was African American and a “top” type Lesbian so even though she was a chick, you know, demographically she had the ability to punch. I went back out to the parking lot to find you and go. Figured we would split a cab, which would have taken up all the money I had left, but, we had to get out of there.
I went back to the parking lot to find you and you were gone. You had been lying on your face in an empty parking space against a cinder block wall one minute and then you just disappeared. The crazy black chick with the vampire-y blue contact lenses followed me out, yelling, motherfucker this, motherfucker that, nigga you better get the FUCK out of here RIGHT NOW and I was like, look, let me wait till Astrid comes back. We gotta get a cab. She kept yelling. So I thought: fuck it. I asked her to open the gate so I could go. She wouldn’t open the gate. She was calling the cops. She was telling them I was menacing her and wouldn’t leave when in fact I was prevented from leaving by the giant electric metal gate to the parking lot, which had no way of being opened without some remote of hers. Yeah, he has a plaid shirt on, she was saying into the phone. I was pleased I wasn’t wearing my distinctive blazer and pocket square or lavender cardigan. I imagined blending seamlessly into a sea of plaid shirts. Eventually I just jumped the wall.
Now I am in fucking Tarzana late at night, stumbling drunk, no idea if they even have buses this far out and not enough cab money to get to my house. But I was more scared for you, because you were doing that thing you do when you get drunk and you just shut down. You become this floppy corpse who only stirs for a few seconds at a time to slur a couple words and grind your pussy against whoever’s trying to hold you up, the way a dog in heat drags her crotch on the carpet. And you were out there somewhere wandering around this weird deep valley neighborhood and maybe you would pass out in a bush and choke on your own puke and die. Walking down the street I thought I saw you and I was thrilled and relieved. But when the figure turned around it was a different chick with strawberry blonde hair and all white on, seeing a drunk hollow-eyed stranger rushing toward her.
Then I turned a corner and there you were for real and I thought: great, this is finally over. We can go home. But you tried to run right past me. I was pissed. I grabbed you and said listen: let’s just call a ca– and you bit me. I kept trying to grapple you and you kept biting me. I think I threw you on the ground. Or maybe I just dropped you and you couldn’t stand up. We were in a patch of grass in front of an apartment building and a man was sitting on his balcony watching. I figured he would call the cops; I knew the crazy black chick had called the cops, now here I was, a serial psychopath violently terrorizing women all over this sleepy community. But no cops ever came. You got up and ran away from me and I chased you.
You wearing all white, so it was easy to chase you even down streets where there were no street lights. And it seemed like you kept slowing down so I could catch you. I think that’s what you wanted. You wanted to drag out this whole domestic violence type hell as long as possible. Some part of you needs to escalate everything, bring it to its worst, see how awful you can make people act. You would slow down seeming to think you’d lost me and look back and there I was. I felt like the Terminator.
You ran into traffic. I saw you get a car to stop and a guy to roll his window down and you pointed at me and were clearly telling him that I was a violent miscreant bent on killing you. He didn’t do shit. The other guy who saw me putting you in a headlock clearly hadn’t called the cops either, there were no cops on the streets. The good people of Tarzana would hear you screaming like Kitty fucking Genovese and just turn up the TV.
Eventually I lost you. There was a patch of woods with a big fence around it. The fence continued for a long way in one direction, and I realized it must contain some kind of train or busway. Miraculously, you had led me to the Orange Line, which I could take to the Red Line. On the bus a girl was yelling at a guy about some other girl who had been texting him. The girl was hot. I bet the other one was too. Five guys in the world get all the pussy.