Ten Thousand Words 1 Things always peaked early at Michelle's on a Wednesday night. Michelle, proprietress, was wiping the bar down and telling us to drink up. Old Tom, establishment furniture, was haranguing her to let us stay on and have a good time. A girl was hanging on my arm, but I wanted another drink. Unlike Old Tom, I was willing to move on for the next one. “Go home, Old Tom,” said Michelle, “I'll see you tomorrow, I'm sure.” The girl and I left him there protesting. Soon enough he'd run out of steam, mope out, round the corner, and up to his room, where Old Tom's wife had already got tired of chastising him. He'd take a nip of mouthwash, since she wouldn't let the stuff in the house, and fall across the couch. Old Tom's wife's sleeping pill would wear off a few hours later and she'd go out for a glass of water, see him there, curse him, throw a blanket over him, then return to toss about in her bed waiting for dawn and the neighorhood kids who came to her after school for piano lessons. I put the girl in a taxi. It was two blocks up to the next bar: Abelaird's. Abelaird kept things going long after Michelle had closed up shop. I started walking up there. I got along the first block okay. There was a girl on the corner who started to give me the shakedown, until she recognized my face. I'd given her a few creative refusals of service on my walks up to Abelaird's from Michelle's, and though now I'd come into a bit of a drought in that respect, she'd let up on making them necessary. She just pretended to ignore me, as if there were something much more exciting happening down the street. There wasn't. I wondered whether I'd ever request her services one night, just to see how she'd react, what it'd be like between us after a decent period of seeing eachother and knowing we'd probably see eachother again, she just standing on the corner cursing the cold and the drought of johns and I ambling or hurrying or stumbling up the block depending on how well I'd got on at Michelle's. I decided against it tonight. I pushed on. I was nearing the top of the second block, across the corner of which was Abelaird's, its neon script humming, yellow lights thrumming, and the tinkling of good music spilling and whispering down the street, when a kid in skinny jeans and a black hood came out of the alley and stood there in front of me, his hand shoved menacingly into his pocket. Punks, I thought. Sure enough, a hand fell roughly on my shoulders from behind and I was pushed into the alley. I got a knee in the kidney and fell over onto some garbage bags. I was face down in the bags and I could smell chicken bones and something yeasty. I began reaching into my back pocket but felt something sharp and cold rap against the top of my hand. Then the guy with the rough hands lay them on both my shoulders and pushed me deeper into the yeasty chicken bones smell. He picked me up and I gasped some air, heard the jeans and hood guy say something about payment coming after service, and then I was plunged back into the pile of trash and soon I'd done that enough times to black out. But not before becoming entirely too sober. 2 “Abelaird, I need a beer: I'll pay you for it tomorrow.” “I'll start you a tab,” said Abelaird, and he poured me a beer. Things probably never peaked at Abelaird's, but at least he kept his joint open. I don't know what made me not go straight there: something made me warm up at Michelle's anytime I was heading out for a drink. At Abelaird's the music was better, the guys less rowdy, the girls less clingy; everyone was a bit more world-weary, and that suited me just fine, 'cause I was too, and even the drinks were cheaper. I clung to mine. Sucked down a third of the pint, went back to clinging to it. The fellow next to me said: “Looks like you've been in the wars.” I fucking hate that expression, but he was probably right. Any other night and my estimation of Abelaird's and his patrons would have fallen to its knees. I grunted. “Yep, Ah'rmumber wunce Ah luk jes lakkit. Weren't nevuh in no war, tho, but Ah bin clozinuff, lumme tell you!” I really didn't want to let him tell me. I sucked down the next third. “Hey! Heyaheh, hey Abbeylayerd, gemme done here uh jug fer mah lissner, 'e lukkit needs more'n 'is tabbun take, s'putter on mahn 'nah'll tellern muh stowree.” I licked the last third, the jug arrived, my neighbor filled my glass and began his story. “Were on mah way to Abbeylayrd's heer wunnaht nut long agow'n theeza too hudlooms jummee! Wunnam jum owt wah knifer 'nee say fuss we gunna beatcha, thun we gunna gutcha, thun we gunna taker waller...” The beer or the beating, I was dozy. I was nodding, my chin hitting my chest, then I nodded right onto the bar. It went black and things felt all right with me; I knew they weren't, but things felt all right. 3 I'd had concussion. I woke up in hospital and they shined lights in my eyes and shit and then they left me alone for a long time and then they came back and then the girl down the hall came and took me home and put me in my bed and said I had to stay there and made me broths and soups and tea and I didn't want to stay in bed but it made her feel good to keep me there and me feel good to make her feel good. “Matt,” I said, after a few days of that (her name was Matilda), “can you do me a favor?” “Oh, you're awake? How are you feeling?” “I'm feeling pretty good, Matt. How are you? I want you to do me a favor.” “What's that?” “What time is it?” “I'm just warming your dinner in the kitchen now.” “Oh, good. I'll need my strength. I want you to do me a favor.” “Yes. After dinner?” “Yes, after dinner I want you to go up the block. You know, the corner past Michelle's? There should be a girl there after dinner. I want you to send her up to me and take the night for yourself.” She looked down at me, a very sad look on her face. She reached to touch my cheek with her hand but stopped a couple of inches short. She asked: “Are you sure you're up to receiving company?” and I nodded and rested my head back in the pillows. I opened my eyes again when she gave my shoulder a little shake. She got a spoonful of her broth ready but I shook my head at her. That sad look came over her face again and she went out. As soon as she closed the door behind her I wolfed that broth down, sent a couple of pieces of toast down after it; even considered getting up and hobbling over to the kitchen to see if there was anything else I could get into me. Instead I just reached for the glass next to my head, took a sip, and rested my head back again. There was a knock soon enough, and I said: “Come in.” She came in, dressed perhaps a bit warmer than usual, with a fluffy scarf winding up round her waist and curling tightly round her neck and down an arm. She closed the door and I got her to lock it behind her. She came over to the chair by the bed and sat down very slowly and gently, and rested her hands on her crossed knees. She looked very comfortable. Much more comfortable than I should with that feathery thing winding all over me. She purred. “Well, not such a hotshot now, are we?” she remarked. I smiled. I gave her a big old grin. She made a brief advertisement of the price and I shrugged and told her to sit on the edge of my bed. She slid over and started running her hand across the sheets and over me. It was all very nice. I began to think that this was not going to be weird at all. I told her to get under there with me and she did and kept trying to do things until I made her stop and we talked for a while about how we'd seen eachother most every night for some time and that that's sometimes enough to mean something and and then I let her do things. But she stayed. And I was very happy. She fell asleep there under my arm. 4 In the morning there was a lot of cursing and pulling on of clothes and then she ran into Matilda going out the door and then I had to deal with more cursing, only the silent kind, which is worse, and I just wanted to hide under the covers and remember the good things. I tried to chat with Matt all day, but she was very upset. Eventually I sprang out of bed, saying “Look! I'm fine! Leave me alone, I don't need your damned help or your damned disapproval!” and then I fell over and it went black again, but not for very long. I was on the floor and then she helped me back up into the bed. I told her not to, but she rang the doctor and then, to keep me awake while he came over, performed her silly play for me. She'd done some school teaching before she made her career as a full time spinster, and she had a bunch of childish skits in her head that she must have done for the kids or the kids had done for her or she'd organized for the school play or something. Usually she'd recite them to herself in a quiet, high, child's voice when she thought I was sleeping, but now she was actually standing before me acting them out, using furniture for props, giving different characters different voices. I really wanted to sleep but I also wanted to go on living for a little more, and so I propped open my eyelids and watched, too exhausted to contort my face or expel some sound in a way which would make her stop. Matilda's Play Act I E: Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear! A: Nevermind that, come here, let's enjoy thisteryear! E: You have such a way with words! A: And you are the most studious and most beautiful I have ever had the luck to call my pupil. But come, it is recess! E: Oh, you are right, I suppose. Just one thing I wanted to mention: our child... A: Our child? E: Uh, yes. I thought I'd call him Astrolabe. A: Brilliant! Cruel, but brilliant. E: Oh, and must we keep our love such a secret? We may be able to rendezvous like this often enough, but we shan't be able to hide Astrolabe forever. A: You know, babe, you sure know how to chill a mood, don't you? E: What is that supposed to mean? A: I can't take it. I'm outta here. Have fun with Astrolabe. E: My uncle is gonna be pissed. Act II A: Humm, huh? what... Hey! Hey, what the fuck are you doing in my bedroom?! Wh-what is that? What is that instrument—where are you, ah! AAaaahh!! U: That was for my niece. A: My balls! Act III A: Dearest E., How are you and Astrolabe? Things are great here at the monastery. Because of my condition I get to go down the road to the nunnery and look after the girls, which, as you can imagine, is much fun, though I am not able fully to appreciate it. Speaking of which, I am writing to confess to you that though I plied you with words intimating true love, it was really only lust: I _needed_ to get into those pants. Oh well, guess that shows me. Ta ta! P.S. My hormones may be affecting my reason, but we should chat, like old times! Hit me back, A. The doctor arrived, saving me from this surrealist nightmare. He said I was fine, no risk of further concussion, but I looked pleadingly enough in his eyes that he recommended rest, and so dismissed Matilda for me. I thanked him and he made to follow her out. “Oh, doctor, one more thing: if you think I'm up to it—I certainly feel up to it, now that I am to be left alone—there is a woman up the block from here...” 5 Well, the whore didn't come. I avoided Matilda by a variety of methods, chief of which was making her believe that the whore had come, did come, regularly. “Oh, hi, Matt! Can't come to the door right now, I'm afraid: bit busy!” I'd say, and every night I'd slam my headboard against our shared wall for an hour or so. That seemed to do the trick. But in the meantime I was getting fit, nursing my head back into shape by ordering a bunch of booze up to my room and sloshing it in there. After a week or so of that I was feeling like a taught bow-string. I snuck out my door and down the stairs, out the building, round the corner and up a few blocks. I passed Michelle's and went straight up to my friend. “You never returned my calls.” At least she noticed me. The streets were dead. “Sugar, I don' know what you talkin' about.” “Last week. I sent Dr. Igor up to fetch you back to my apartment.” “What he look like?” “Um, a bit like Igor? You know, Frankenstein?” She looked at me funny. Then she laughed. “You mean like this?” and she stuck her arms out in front of her and started zombieing around the street corner. I laughed. “Yeah, like that.” But she kept doing it. And then she started making this low groaning noise. My laughter turned into a cough. “Uh, yeah, that's Frankenstein, but this guy was Igor, you know, with the hunchback?” She stopped, snapped out of it. Paused. Then she snapped into hunchback pose. My laughs were getting more half-hearted by the second. One over eks converges on zero. She was hunched over her handbag now. She pulled out a black stick of some kind of make up. She drew some stitches around her head and stuck her arms out and started reeling round the corner more out of it than ever. The low groaning noise was back and getting louder. I shook my head and slouched back to Michelle's. Shit, I still hadn't done anything about my wallet. “Hey, Old Tom, buy us a beer?” He glared at me and pulled his face in on itself, further in than usual. He was like the nowhere man disappearing into himself, only that guy was better looking. I sat at the bar and looked at Michelle in a forlorn kinda way. She didn't give a damn that I wanted a beer and wanted one bad. She was probably getting ready to close up, anyway. “Did I hear a fellow say he needs a beer?” I felt a huge hand come down on my shoulder. It belonged to a huger man with a huge old jaw holding up the hugest most friendly smile a poor guy like me could ever hope to have the fortune of experiencing. I was utterly humbled. “No need to confirm, friend,” he said, “I can see it in your eyes. Michelle, get this man a beer!” Michelle glowered at the big friendly man, but made with the beer. “Okay, Pete, but I'm gonna wanna closea this joint pretty soon, right?” Pete just smiled and she slid the beer in front of me. I couldn't get half of it down my throat quick enough. I looked at big Pete. Hadn't seen him there at Michelle's before. I told him as much and he just smiled. Then, a little guilty, I asked if he wasn't joining me. He said, “Don't drink the stuff, friend. But you enjoy it. Looks mighty fine and refreshing. 'Chelly pours 'em best, I hear.” I wasn't complaining. But I sipped the rest, to be polite. “Now I've got a little question for you, friend. A little bit of scientific research you can help me out on.” Uh-oh. Big Pete just got creepy. Plus I was starting to worry that Michelle was wiping the bar down. I was running out of beer fast. “Oh, yeah? What kind of research?” “I said! scientific.” “Ah, yes, you did say. But what type of science?” “Friend, I dunno what the fancy -ologogical word be: I just want you to do a little field work for me.” “Pete, thanks for the beer, but I really gotta cruise. I wish I had time for your little experiment but I got flies to watch. They won't crawl across my ceiling without me.” I think that hurt Pete. Everything else on him was just as big except for the smile, which now looked ridiculous, perched tinily on his massive jaw. I felt bad, but I also didn't want to get raped up the ass by the guy, so I cut it. “Seeya later, Pete. Michelle.” Dammit if the guy didn't come out onto the street after me, shouting: “Friend! All you gotta do is canvas the town, asking 'em whether they think ‘whom’ is a pretentious prestige-marker or a legitimate grammatical form in everyday English! I've got questionnaires and everything! Friend! Buddy!” I walked faster, away from the whore on the corner still swinging around in circles moaning with her eyes rolled back and towards my building. The night was fucked. 6 Dammit, Matilda was sitting there on the carpet of the hall in front of my door, crosslegged, no shoes on, wearing some kind of baggy hippy pants and she'd hacked most of her hair off with what looked like musta been an implement usually reserved for gardening. She had make-up on, which I hadn't seen before, only her eyes were smudged all to hell. I sighed. She looked up at me. “Why can't you love me?” Aww, Jesus. Jesus fuck. I reached over her head and unlocked the door. “Look, come inside.” She moved out of the way while I opened the door, and followed me in. She put the bolt on for me. Why had everyone I knew, and more besides, decided to go psychotic on me all of a sudden? Two weeks ago I was my regular self: put in a quiet shift at the most tolerable job I'd been able to find over the years, come home, fry an egg, head on over to Michelle's see what happened, then roll up to old Abelaird's and let the night quietly peter out, stumble back home past the whore who'd keep her distance and I'd keep mine, in between the rotting sheets and wait for the alarm to ring and begin it all again. But ever since those fucking punks'd mugged me—damn! They hadn't just taken my wallet: they took my god-damned sanity. And here I was with a girl I wasn't interested in hanging round my apartment in her pyjamas and bad haircut. “Okay, sit down. No, sit down on a chair, fer chrissake. I can't use all the furniture by myself. You want a drink?” She didn't say anything, so I made us each a strong gin and tonic. I splashed some of that bottled lime juice into each one, so we wouldn't get scurvy, which is my greatest fear in life. “Here.” The ice cubes rattled up against the side of the glass in a wave of pure refreshment. Then they settled with a pleasant slosh, and my arm was just getting to be tired of holding it out there when she grabbed it and slurped up a good part of what I'd put in there. I sat in the couch, relieved, and took the first beautiful sip. I couldn't be fucked making conversation. If this was her company, I could tolerate it. I had a few more beautiful sips. I refilled her glass and mine. I did that a couple more times and the whole time she didn't say anything. It was fantastic. At last I said, “You know, you're actually a pleasure to be around, when you try.” And she smiled and I felt good. But I just nestled back into my seat and smiled too. Grinned. And let the gin wash over me. A few minutes later the lights were getting dim and I was very happy, falling asleep, and she must have very quietly gotten up and moved over to my seat. I have this dim recollection of a vaguely Matilda-shaped shadow moving in my direction and nestling gently in my lap. I was very happy, like a cat. Everything was warm and not dangerously wobbling but gently drifting and growing pleasantly dark and warm and fading out or in and oh, it was bliss. 7 Shit, though, did my head ever hurt in the morning. I mean, I never get hangovers: what the fuck was going on? There I was, curled up on the couch, an old blanket wound and tangled round me, and, like in a cartoon, this wisp of vapor came floating across the room. I was probably snoring. The smoke came along like a charmed snake and eventually it got caught in the vortex of my noisily drawn breath. It rushed up my nose, into the thicket of nasal hair, the nose twitched, maybe you thought for a second my sleep would remain undisturbed, then bam! I'm sitting up, probably still more intoxicated than hung over, and terrified the house is burning down around my ears. Then I look across into the kitchen area and there's Matilda grinning at me as though she's doing me a real service scaring the shit out of me and melting eggs and bacon to the bottom of my good pan. “Hey!” I said, and that was enough to make me realize the pain I'd brought in on myself. God-damn. Hangover—what the fuck? I must have seemed upset: she dropped the spatula into the pan and came over and caressed my head and everything. “Dear, are you okay? What's the matter? I thought I'd make us some eggs. You know, breakfast in bed.” “That's fine,” I whispered, “Just take the goddamned plastic spatula out of the frying pan!” The smoke had turned acrid in my nostrils. Was the woman a fucking dunce? “Oh dear!” and she hurried back over to the stove. I quietly unwrapped the knotted blanket from round me and slipped into my rumpled clothes. I don't know how I did it, but I was out the door and she hadn't noticed. I walked south a block to where I knew there was a good cafe. A twig of a girl came up and I thought her smile was possibly a worm-hole portal to another dimension, a crack in the space--time continuum, a tear in reality, and then she put the menu down and hobbled back to the kitchen. I ordered eggs benedict and dear god it was beautiful. I dunno how they do the eggs like that, but they burst out all over the toast what seemed like a hair before my knife actually touched them, and mixed magnificently, running into the gooey Hollandaise. I wolfed the first egg and toast down and relished the second. I sucked the beautiful goo off each broiled spinach leaf and left them unwanted on the plate like seaweed drying on a sun-blasted beach at low tide. I left something else green and crumply on the table next to the plate and left the cafe. I considered walking around the block or down to the port to check out the container lifts taxiing around but I decided to head back home. I dunnow why: I still had a week of sick leave up my sleeve. I shoulda been making the most of it, not trying to nurse my head back to sanity. But I guess I just felt like it. On the near corner was a girl with a clipboard. Oh, no, I thought. Save the Whales, it'll be, or feed a child or something. I strayed over to the far side of the sidewalk, making to casually ignore her as I drew near. But as I drew near, I could not help but notice the girl seemed rather familiar. She was short and frail of build, and too nervous to approach strangers and have them take her seriously. Whoever'd hired her must not have given her a face-to-face interview, or something. She was shy as hell. She was Matilda. God damn. “What the hell are you doing now,” I said, beating her to it, as though she'd done something wrong and not I. “Oh, hello. I, uh, I didn't see you leave. I hope you have a key: I put the lock on.” “Never mind that, what are you doing out here with a clipboard on a street corner?” “Oh,” she smiled. Then she smoothed some of her clothes and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, looking slightly above and past my right shoulder, “I have here a short questionnaire I was wondering if you'd have the time to fill out. It's all about the modern state of the English language, you see, sir. The first question is: what would be your reaction to an arrogant woman stopping you on the street, weilding a formidably large stick of salami, saying ‘Just whom do you think you are, mister?’?” I looked at her slyly. “What's the next question?” “Certainly, sir. Question Two: what word fits best in the sentence ‘I did not know’—blank—‘he was dancing so provocatively for,’: ‘who’ or ‘whom’?” “I see. Tell me, Matt, were you by any chance put up to this ridiculous chore by a big friendly looking man called himself Pete?” “Oh, Pete is _so_ nice, isn't he? He said I could help out with his university research project. It's all really very important and influential work. It's called Master or Honor or something. And he is very handsome, when he smiles, don't you think?” “Look, I'm sorry I just left. It was a very nice gesture for you to try—ahem, offer to make me breakfast in bed. It was all just a little too fast for me, you understand? I had a very good time last night with you but I suppose I wasn't ready for you to stay round and be there in the morning. I mean, it was fine. You can stay round if you need to. But really, you live just down the hall. I'd have seen you to your room if I hadn't been so, uh, tired.” “Oh,” and she uttered this horrific little titter of a laugh. If it were any faker I'd have had to pay a gold coin for it. “Oh, that's okay. I understand. We can take it slowly, of course. How 'bout we make an effort not to see eachother until, oh, say, eight o'clock tonight? That's enough torture, I'd say. After all, we can't stop what eventually we know will happen in all its fluorescent beauty. And I know what we can do, too! On the way here to this corner from our apartment building; on the way here from your apartment, I stopped in at the erotic boutique. I picked up a neat little number I'm sure you're gonna like. Oh, but don't worry, it's nothing _too_ out there. We are, after all, taking it slow, aren't we? Oh, but I'll see you tonight. I know it shall be hard for us each, but I am willing, for the strength of our relationship, to put myself through such a long wait if you are. I'll see you at eight. You are just going to _love_ my little ensemble.” I looked at her blankly, shook my head, put my hands in my pockets, and crossed the street. I could hear her voice receding in the distance: “Good morning, sir, if you'd just care to fill out this survey for me I'd be quite willing to perform for whomever...” 8 I kicked the door of the apartment building as I went by. I kicked Michelle's door next. She wouldn't be open for several hours yet. It was almost as though she didn't want to make any money. I nearly tripped on FrankenWhore's curb crossing the street. Even Abelaird's wasn't open. Shit, it was early. I didn't know what to do with myself. I went up another few blocks to the public library. I was looking for a picture book by Edward Gorey. I knew they had a thing called Object-Lesson, and I love that book; but I'd already “read” it a few times. I still wanted my Gorey fix, but Object-Lesson couldn't do it for me anymore. And, sure enough, the library hadn't gotten any new Gorey in. I didn't waste time chewing out the acquisitions librarian or moping around the young adult section: I struck out across town for the university library instead. I hadn't been a student at the university for nigh on a decade, but such was my infatuation, my need for Gorey that I would bear to stay within the walls of the general academic for as long as it took to get my fix. I made my way over to the catalogue computer and made my request. The screen flickered a little. I thought I saw a page of results: glorious screeds of Gorey records waiting to be followed up on and checked out. But then it flicked back to the home page, and my search query was erased. I typed it in again. The same thing happened again only faster. ‘Gorey, E.’ was wiped from the text area as if with a vengeance. Oh, shit, I thought. After a half-second's reflection I typed in: ‘Kafka, F.’ The screen faded like a pixelated Niagra falling off into reality, and then was replaced by a neon green/purple flashing screen, with the negatived text “I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.” burning holes in my retinas. I felt a heavy hand fall on each of my shoulders. “Why, hello, officers,” I heard myself say, though my voice was as if underwater on a different planet in a different galaxy, perhaps even a different universe: maybe you'd have to pitch yourself through the worm-hole space-tear in the cafe girl's insane grin in order to find the spot on this crazy mobius loop Klein bottle whence my incredibly distant voice. I dunno. They hauled me back behind the lending desk, I dragging my heels on the tuff industrial carpet, and back into returns. 9 There was a hideous woman back there with boils on her face. Huge boils, like she belonged behind a gas heater or something. I grimaced and one of the mall-cop-uniformed library cops sapped me on the back of the head with, well, with a sap. He showed it to me later, almost bragging. It was a lump of lead in the end of some black moulded rubber. All the physics were right: it sure packed a wallop. Which was about all I could appreciate about it at that point: things went black and spotty.

I came round and it was dark outside and the library seemed to be closed. I wandered round to the front doors. There was a button you could push and it would open the doors for you after hours. But before I pressed it I remembered my Gorey. I hiked up a couple of floors and found something by him. Then I returned to the ground floor, hit the little green button, and I was outta there. Plus I'd gotten to take the Gorey out with me in spite of not having a current library card. By all rights I should have been up on the evening. And I think at that point I really believed that I was. There was FrankenWhore on the corner as I came along my street. She did the usual pretend to ignore me thing, which hadn't been usual of late and so gave me special joy. Until I craned my head around behind me as I turned into Michelle's and noticed that she had her arms out in front of her again and was following me down the street. I could hear that low groaning noise starting up and beginning to get louder. I shuddered and entered Michelle's. I drew up to Old Tom, who was grimacing into the bottom of a nearly empty mug of beer like every night. “Old Tom,” I said, trying not to sound too desperate, “gimme a beer, man. I really need a beer, and I got mugged recently and Michelle doesn't like me having a tab.” “Hell, son,” grumbled Old Tom, “that bitch don' wan' noe boddy got no _tab_. Hell, it a wunner she let you'rneye inneer attall, huh heh a heh heh. Heh.” I looked at him imploringly. He scowled. “I ain' gunn giyah no buhr. Go make uh frenn or summin'.” Shit. Fucking Old Tom. I looked at Michelle. She was reaching for that dish rag. I sighed. I tried to do it visibly, since she probably had her hearing aid turned off. It was a good excuse not to take shit from the like of Old Tom when she wanted to close up. Just then FrankenWhore came in. Her outheld knuckles pushed the door and it swung inward and in marched the strange woman of the night I then shuddered to think I'd known carnally. She'd gone all out with the make-up tonight. The foundation was now a nice greenish hue. The scars and stitches were more abundant and better detailed. She'd super-glued some plastic lugs to her head after dousing them in metallic paint. The low groaning noise was deafening. Michelle whirled on her in disgust. “Hey!” Michelle said at me, “Who the fuck is that?!” “Uh,” I said, “uh.” The whore started reeling around what might have been a dance floor back in the days of the player piano but which then was just a big old empty space between nowhere and the bar. She was certainly in a trance. It was terrifying. Michelle was yelling my name with a shrill rising inflection. Question mark plus exclamation point. She was getting really unnerved by the dancing FrankenWhore. She reached under the bar. I knew what she kept there under the bar. It was a firearm. But not just any firearm. That was a serious sawn-off job. Like, zombie attack shit right there. I'd seen her threaten Old Tom with it once, when he'd had too much to drink and didn't want to stop. More drink than usual and less willing to move along than usual, by far. But when Michelle had pushed the barrel of that gun up against his frail mouth, probably dislodging a half-century-old filling with the force of her disapproval; he'd whimpered and scurried back home like usual, even a little quicker. Unfortunately for Michelle, FrankenWhore was not nearly so frightened by the weapon. She looked at it and uttered this otherworldly chuckle underneath the never-interrupted low groaning noise, and I was just getting afraid of what the result of that obvious affront would be when in came Matilda on the arm of big Pete. “Friends!” said big Pete, “what fun, what confounded fun is going on here?” FrankenWhore swung her held-out arms round in his direction and came marching on. “Friend!” chuckled big Pete, stretching out his palm. The whore walked her forehead into the flat of his hand and all of a sudden she snapped out of it. Her joints went from stiff to fluid and she wrapped herself around big Pete as he took a stool at the bar. Now he had a girl on each arm and Michelle was warily putting her firearm back beneath the bench. Pete looked me up and down. “Michelle, get this man a beer,” he said. Michelle shoved the shotgun back up in there and made with the beer. She slid it in front of me and I nodded at her. She reached for that dishrag. “So tell me, friend, how goes the research?” asked Pete. I downed the beer and looked at him. “I told you I didn't have the time to partake, Pete. Remember?” “Michelle, the man needs a refill. I thought Matilda here had talked you round, old friend—” “Pete,” said Michelle, firmly but at the same time very waveringly, “I'm not going to refill this man's glass.” “Oh, Michelle? And why not?” “He's brought this place nothing but trouble. Old Tom is bad enough, but this fellow behaves as if it's a game. Besides, I'm tired, Old Tom's getting tipsy, and I want to close up.” Big Pete waved his hand in a deprecating way at her and Michelle slumped under her own weight, fell back onto a stool which most conveniently found itself beneath her. Old Tom slumped over his beer, knocking it over. It pooled round his forehead, which was now pressed sullenly against the top surface of the bar. From under Pete's right arm Matilda revolved off up into the air until she was slowly rotating, seemingly asleep, a few feet below the ceiling, her hair and clothes hanging down off her. From under his left arm the whore Eloise spun very quickly and threw her arms around me and hung there like a freaking albatross. Big Pete himself cackled and went up in flames, disintegrating to a pile of ash before my very eyes. Eloise swung herself up close to my face and gave me a rough as hell kiss, clamping her teeth down hard on my bottom lip. I was far too dizzy to scream. We were suddenly outside. The door to Michelle's seemed to be hanging off its hinges and there was deathly black smoke billowing out of the doorway. I could hear sirens coming closer. Eloise was still hanging off my bottom lip. I could feel it beginning to tear. 10 The group met twice a week. That was fairly frequently, one might suppose; but it showed how serious they were about their ideals. Above the mantle in a carved wooden script were the words _SIC ET NON_. “We are meant to die,” suggested a female member; “it is what makes anything about us matter.” There was a period of silence. The members' heads were bowed under their large peaked hoods as they contemplated the statement. The answer, of course, was there above them, above the mantlepiece, hanging in pure confident silence: _SIC ET NON_, but it was best to contemplate any offering as though the answer had the potential to be something else. The members sat in silence in a circle, and whenever somebody felt particularly struck by the word of the unspeaking, they might rise and minister the group, pulling back their hood. It was all very egalitarian, though Mary, an old hand at the meetings, often spent more than her due time on her feet uttering what she felt had been channeled through her as the truth. But this female member was relatively new, though not embarrassingly so—some thought they got the hang of it and were bold enough to minister at their first meeting, though that type never lasted long—and she had not yet felt the impulse to rise and minister. It must be said her contribution had more potential for the profound than what was usually uttered round that circle, but it was not good form to remark as much: every member's contribution, whenever one was made, had equal virtue and equal humility. Which was why it was strange when an elderly member—not Mary: she was quetly miffed at having been shown up by such a young recruit—became physically disturbed by the young girl's remark. He bagan to shake and tremble as though overcome by some physical ailment. Though, despite his age, the man was probably fitter than most specimens at the meeting. He started off with a little shudder as soon as the last syllable had fallen from her lips and soon, gradually, the shudder became a shake, then a tremble, then a quake, and soon he was writhing in his chair, then there was a crash and he was writhing on the floor, soon he was dancing like St. Vitus, throwing his limbs about at the most disturbing angles. It was bad form to break the circle before time. Time was usually decided consensually, though if one noted the time one would see the whole ritual lasted rather neatly a square hour. And, believe it or not, the writhing, aged man in the center of the floor did not a thing change: all members remained silent, contemplating the last ministry, or perhaps moving on to their own personal meditations, but none arising to give the poor man aid. Until the hour was up. The circle then quietly dispersed and the members soaked out of their non-think trance and into reality, and soon enough somebody noticed the poor man, and there was then a great bustle as well meaning members battled to be the one who would escort the man to safety and health. 11 We were playing a game of Rithmomachia. I thought I was winning, but it was hard to tell. Perhaps in an attempt to throw me off, Abelaird would throw out a question in a seemingly harmless way after each of his moves. But the questions were gems like: “Must human faith be completed by reason, or not?”, “Is there any knowledge of things unseen, or not?”, and “May one believe only in God alone, or not?”. Christ Almighty, I'd sigh, SIC et NON, motherfucker. And I'd sneak in an ambuscade and he'd curse. I was about to line up my _uictoria excellentissima_ when in came Porphiry. The trouble was I couldn't tell whether it was Dostoevsky's Porfiry or Porphyry of Tyre: the dude was dressed like a seedy-as-fuck detective, but he was also dressed all in purple. The fact that he made knowing winks at me didn't help either way. I was pretty pissed that he'd interrupted my victory, whoever he was. “Whomever the devil be these starfish undulating beneath my tenticular vision?” questioned he, ecstatic. He was writhing in a disturbing fashion: I sighed, moved my last round into place, issued the fact of my victory, and expelled myself from the room, their time, their universe. I am floating through some not-space, not seriously concerned about how I come to be breathing quite so easily in this not-quite-a-vacuum, since there are more pressing matters at hand. Like why I've got Alkaline Trio thrumming in my ears. In space nobody can hear you scream, but apparently you can still rock out. Or maybe I've just got a hole in my head the size of Lake fucking Michigan. All my money's been spent on a D.I.Y. lobotomy. This is fucking fantastic. What I thought was a space cloud of indeterminate space dust has now coalesced into Eloise—FrankenWhore, you may otherwise know her. She stretches her arms out towards me and smiles. We make sweet, dirty, obscene love, spinning out into space. A giant space baby disapproves and zaps us back to earth. It's a serious disappointment to find myself in a crumpled hump of clothing, the smell of various drugs and the taste of ash and hard liquor on my breath, curled up at the feet of Eloise on the corner a couple blocks up the street from my apartment. I look up and ask her back to my place. 12 “Eloise, dear, do you believe in yes and no?” “I try not to think about it, dearest. Shall we take another tour of the grounds?” “No. I'm terribly tired.” “It is only half the witching hour.” “Really? It feels much later. I'm spent, I'm afraid. But do stay. I can pay if you like.” “No, my pimp, Pete was his name: he dead.” “Oh, Pete. Yes, yes he is dead, isn't he?” “As a doornail. And I don't blame you, dearest.” “I wish I were blamable, I really do. But I understand what happened to Pete like British Petroleum understands the extent of the damage caused by that oil leak.” She didn't know what I was talking about but she ran her forefinger along my clavicle and down across my chest in patterns known only to her mind. I had work the next day. What a fucking bummer. “Eloise, why don't you move in with me? I enjoy your company so, and you keep Matty next door at bay. She really has it in for me but I just can't hit that, no matter how hard I try. Is there something wrong with me?” “Dearest, if you could hit that, then there'd be summat wrong.” We stopped talking and did a few different things, all of them unmentionable. The next day at work I punched Jared in the face. Jared was this lanky vegetarian dick-head. I socked him in the jaw and watched it almost clear off from his face altogether. He mumbled something round it that sounded vaguely threatening; in a legal manner, that is. So I high-tailed it outta there. I walked up to the on-ramp outta town and stuck my thumb out. 13 Fellow picked me up name of Moses. His buddy in the passenger seat, Aristotle, handed me a beer. I was in the back of their van, nestled in amongst the hay baling. Soon as we got on the road we got off it and onto some crazy back-road. I was a little nervous. “Hey, guys,” I said, a little nervously, “you take the back-roads, huh?” I got a mumbled reply from the pair in the cab, but it sounded vaguely affirmative, so I nestled in further, watched the road unwind out the back window for a while, sucked down the beer, and closed my eyes for a few miles. Thing about hitch-hiking is trust. If you're not content to die right now with no regrets then you'd best stay at home like the pussy you are. Me, I was on the road, part of the road, and it could take me or leave me and I was okay with that. I didn't know what else to be, so I was okay with that. Lo-and-be-fucking-hold, there was another hitcher. A damned woman, too, and on these desert back-roads. She didn't stand a chance in hell in getting anywhere along those kinda routes. Except she did when we came along. She stood quite a good chance. Moses and Archimedes started chuckling to themselves as soon as they saw her up in the distance. They made jokes about my soon to be company in the back of the van there. They offered to put up a screen partition between the cab and the rest of the van. I told them to shove it, but there was a serious twinkle in my eye. Her name was Tunisha. After a few miles she pulled out a pipe and we got high in the back of Moses' van. It was fucking fantastic. I asked her where she was going and she said she'd get off wherever I was getting off and I nearly stopped Moses and his jalopy right then and there. But, no, I played it cool. We got on up to Mangonui where Old Tom's bach was and I got us let off. We jimmied the window and got in, turned the power on. It was a swell place, and a swell place to have a girl like Tunisha. We did some things that I'd promised Old Tom I'd never do if I ever decided to break into his bach, and I wrote a dozen letters to different of my friends and Tunisha ran them down to the post officer when she saw him coming along on his route, a tiny plume of brown dust thrown up behind him as he motored along on his mechanical bike. The guy never had anything for us, but Tunisha when she saw him coming would go out to the street and stand in the middle, waiting for the postman to arrive. Even if she had nothing to give him she would stop him in the middle of the street and chat. Once or twice she invited him back for a glass of milk and a biscuit. He would come swaggering into our house, his big red bike perched outside, overflowing with commercial mailing, until he noticed me there. Then a noticeable jamp came out of his swagger. Perhaps he is doomed never to act again. Did I say he acted? Guy was a freaking thespian if ever there were a type. I won't say I was jealous of our postman, but I sure as hell was. The worst thing was that _I_ was the one always getting accused of unfaithfullness. I'd go away for a week or two here or there on strict business—strict, but wherever possible, declassifiedly—and I'd come home and she'd trashed my study or pinned old love letters I'd written to her all over my work desk, just so I'd remember that she was the one I loved and there weren't time for nothing else. Well, it all got a little much for me, eventually. I'd have the tightest possible alibi and still she'd be convinced if I left the house for more than a few hours that I was working a few on the side. I told her ridiculous but she just winked at me and soon I'd had enough. I went back to the city. 14 Nothing had changed. Matty still hounded me, Eloise couldn't be relied upon not to go into a trance, Michelle closed her joint earlier and earlier, and Abelaird still couldn't beat me at Rithmomachy. I didn't feel good and I didn't feel bad. I didn't know whom to feel. I looked at Eloise. She was sitting cross-legged in the midst of some piled up blankets and fluffed pillows in the center of my bed. “I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Eloise. Eloise, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid,” I said. I heard an organ far away. Not on the street, up in the dark night sky somewhere. It was playing the national anthem. The one thing I love about this country is its lack of patriotism. Still, the song filled me with a little something. I could feel my feet leaving the carpet. I was revolving slowly, lifting up into the air. Matty came along in a similar fashion, floating through the glass balcony door. Eloise and Tunisha are seriously grounded, I don't know why. I watch them grow smaller as Matty and I float up, revolving, towards the ceiling, which somehow seems to still be moving farther and farther away from us. It feels like we shall forever continue to rise. I look up and notice that Matt and I have light, almost invisible lines running up from our limbs towards the ceiling. Big Pete is up there in the ceiling, which is getting farther and farther away from us, though not as quickly as the floor is the same, and he is laughing. He holds the marionette sticks in his hands but we are rolling up in the strings like it's freaking cocoon time. Pete is cackling now, again. He is jerking the marionette strings up and down very hard but Mat and I keep rolling up, tighter and tighter. There is nothing he can do about it. There is nothing we can do to aid or hinder big Pete. We are resigned, and so should he be if he knew what were good for him. It's all well and good to chuckle now, but at the time, I'll admit, I was terrified. I blame the organ music for most of it. That shit was terrifying. And the closer (further) I got to (from) the ceiling the more the rate of my spinning and wobbling and churning and suffering increased. The image before my gaze was an alternation of Eloise and Tunisha stuck stranded on the ever-receding carpet below and the also-receding, playful devil that was big Pete above. I wished I'd taken more drugs. But it all seemed rather real. I kept reciting the school prospectus in my head, remembering the scene back at home where I'd convinced my parents that the Arts were where I wanted to go, where I could do my best and make my best contribution. Now I was chanting the reassuring propoganda of the school at full volume. If anyone around me were still real I think maybe I'd have had issues about that. I was fairly sure none of them was, though. Real, I mean. 15 Whomsoever you may well be, balls or all, you must at the signal join in the singing of our national anthem and its variations and translation and submit to the dated ideals enshrined within. If you would make an effort to remain awake as long as possible, this should also be an advantage. Do something new! Learn a new board game! Investigate a new religion! Try accupuncture! Self-mutilation never really went out of vogue, you know. Try a black cape on Tuesdays and a red one for Wednesday and Thursday services. Try variations on a theme. Try themes on a variation. Get out in the field! Questionnaires are for sissies: cut straight to the goods with the help of Occam, unless he needs a shave. Write a pop song. Write a bunch of pop songs and find some plastic young thing to sing them and make you a billion. Punk is dead, and Aristotle believed that women are colder than men and thus a lower form of life. Libertarian socialism died with Kafka, in an introverted maze of legal nonsense. The cut-up technique opened up for them and closes down for us. Everything worth saying most probably has not only been said but been flogged like a quadruped of some description. All the good music has already been written by Frank Zappa, and stuff. There's gotta be more to life than writing a few thousand words about nothing. There's gotta be something more to my day than that. It was a stupid bet made good. What shall I do? What will I do? We live in a country founded by cheats, murderers, rapists, thiefs, terrorists whom captured, killed, enslaved millions of Africans, whom killed more natives than Nazis did Jews while the Catholic church is behind the altar justifying molestation: God bless. We still don't know who or whom the Zodiac killer is or was. As far as big Pete is concerned, it turned out, in a posthumous journal article, ‘whom’ is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. “Look,” I said, “it's gonna find you when you least expect. Hadn't you better—”