Blind Shrike

TWENTY Badlands

Spyder grabbed a cab at Fisherman’s Wharf and took it back to his warehouse.

When the driver tried to engage him in tourist chit-chat, Spyder ignored him and stared out the window. It was dusk. The sky was midnight blue and shot through with glowing stripes of salmon. Lights were coming on as they drove through North Beach. Strip clubs, punk clubs, sports bars and Italian restaurants hissed by. On the corners were groups of tourists shivering as fog came down them in their Alcatraz Swim Team T-shirts. Fidgety clusters of students, street kids and sailors in dress whites ran through the traffic, eager to get on to the next good time.

And there were the mutilated, sipping cappuccinos at sidewalk cafes. The beautiful Volt Eater from the night market was being ferried down Broadway on a glittering sedan chair. Outside a sex shop at Broadway and Columbus, a blue-robed angel sat atop a sacrifice pole holding a dead kitten in its arms and weeping.

Spyder dug the crumpled pack of American Spirits from his pocket and lit one. He thought of something Lulu had said when he first discovered her awful secret, “If you wait long enough, everything becomes normal.” There’s a lot of truth in that, he thought, watching the animal-shaped airships drift through the evening sky. Nothing was bothering him at that moment. With a little practice, he was certain that nothing would ever bother him again.

At the warehouse, Spyder handed the driver a wad of bills and got out of the cab without waiting for change. Inside, the warehouse was cold and not all that comforting. As much as Spyder loved to travel, he was always thrilled and relieved to be back in his own comfortable, messy rooms. As he flicked on the light, however, the familiar piles of books and videos, the scattered clothes, felt odd and alien. He grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes from the kitchen counter and hit the button that rolled up the big garage door that took up most of the west wall of the warehouse. Dropping on to the seat of the Dead Man’s Ducati was the first thing that felt right to Spyder since leaving the boat at Fisherman’s Wharf. He gunned hit the button to lower the door and popped the clutch. Ducking at the last possible moment, Spyder cleared the weather stripping on the bottom of the door by an inch. He roared onto the 101 freeway.

Shooting off the Fell Street exit, Spyder headed up to Haight Street with the throttle wide open, blowing red lights and slow traffic the whole way. He didn’t let up on the gas until he was a block from the tattoo parlor. Fog was drifting in when he rolled the bike between an SUV and a battered El Camino with NUESTRA RAZA stenciled high on the windshield.

Spyder was standing in the street before he realized that the Route 666 Tattoo parlor was gone. The area where the parlor once stood was a charred ruin cordoned off with yellow caution tape.

Spyder’s mind was a complete blank as he ducked under the tape and stood where his customers had scanned the walls, looking over the flash designs. What he felt eventually was surprise. He’d only been gone a day, yet the place had burned and all the debris had been hauled away. Street people had already started a little colony of shopping carts where the back of the shop had stood. A couple of them (Men? Women? He couldn’t tell in their layers of bulky coats) stared at him while passing a bottle of Four Roses back and forth. Spyder kicked at the garbage that had begun to accumulate on the site. In the trash, he found the fried remains of one of his tattoo guns. He picked it up and weighed the thing in his hand. Dead metal. Worthless. Spyder stood up and let the tattoo gun fall back into the debris.

Jogging back to the Ducati, he gunned it to life and tore across Haight Street, up onto the sidewalk and through the caution tape into the shop, scattering trash and splinters of blackened wood. Revving the throttle, Spyder turned donuts in the debris, smoking his rear tire and scaring the winos enough to huddle together in the back. As a foot patrol cop came running into the burned shop, Spyder slammed back onto the street and away.

The light was on in Lulu’s Mission District apartment. Spyder rang her bell and, when there was no answer, yelled up at her window. When that didn’t work, he climbed the fence into her backyard and went across a neighbor’s roof until, with a jump, he could reach the bottom of the fire escape. Spyder hauled himself up to the bottom landing and climbed the stairs to Lulu’s apartment on the fourth floor.

Through the half-open window, he could see Lulu in her old orange robe, passed out on the couch. Pushing open the window the rest of the way, Spyder stepped inside. There were little packets of foil on the coffee table, along with burnt spoons, medical tubing and a syringe with a white, crusted tip. Spyder shouted angrily at Lulu.

“Wake up, asshole. Move. Look at me.”

Lulu was limp, but she made a feeble attempt to push him away. Spyder knew that was a good sign. “Look at me, girl. It’s Spyder. Open your eyes.” He stopped shaking her for a moment when he remembered that she didn’t have eyes to open. It didn’t matter, she was rousing herself by then, holding on to his sleeve and pulling herself up.

“Spyder? That you?”

“Yeah, it’s me. What the hell’ve you been doing?”

Lulu was sitting up shakily, staring in his direction with the little pieces of paper over her hollow eyes. She began to cry quietly and punched him hard in the chest. “Where you been? I thought you’d gone. Run off ’cause I’m a—monster.”

“You’re no monster, Lulu. And I was only gone a day.”

“A week!” yelled Lulu. “You’ve been gone a goddam week and no word at all!”

“Oh, baby.” Lulu grabbed him and cried against him, holding onto his jacket like a child. “I went away to get help for us,” Spyder said. “It didn’t seem like a week, but we went some funny places where the clocks run—different.”

“They burned down the shop, Spyder.”

“Who did it?”

“A bunch of people. Friends!” Lulu wiped her nose on the sleeve of her robe. Spyder handed her a bloody Kleenex from the table where her works were scattered. “They were crazy. Neighbors from Haight Street. People from the Bardo Lounge. They came in saying all kinds of insane shit. You’re a murderer or some shit. And, like, we kidnap kids and do things to ’em in the back. They started tearing the place up and someone had a gas can. I thought they were going to burn me, too.” She was crying again. When Lulu blew her nose, Spyder saw fresh scars on her wrists. Deep and running along the inner length of her arm, the scars were dry, like ruts dug into hard-packed sand. Spyder touched the scars and Lulu laughed.

“Funny, huh? I can’t even off myself. There ain’t enough of me left to suicide.”

While he’d been gone, Lulu had done other things to herself. She’d inserted slivers of glass and rusty nails through her skin, like parodies of her piercing jewelry. Spyder opened her robe and Lulu didn’t resist. Her bare body was decorated with stingray quills and surgical needles. She’d pulled the rubber insulation off wire and laced the bare copper through her skin, ringing the shark’s teeth she’d set above her bare pussy. It was mad. But Spyder had seen it before. It was anger mixed with ritual—Lulu’s fury at her body and an attempt to reclaim her desiccated flesh through pain and action. Spyder closed Lulu’s robe and said, “You’re coming with me.”

“Get away from her!” Spyder hit the deck as someone slammed into him from behind. He managed to get his boots flat on the floor and roll on top of his attacker, pinning their arms down. It was Rubi. She was screaming at him.

“Get out of here, you freak! Killer! You child-molesting fuck!”

“Rubi, calm down,” said Spyder, not daring to let go. When it was clear he wasn’t going to release her, Rubi stopped struggling.

“You going to rape me, too, asshole? Everyone’s on to you. Such a big man. What you do to children, you sick fuck…”

“Rubi, whatever you think you know about me, it’s not true.”

“Don’t you hurt my Lulu!”

From the couch Lulu said, “This is what everyone’s like when they talk about you. What did you do? You’re like Charlie Manson all of a sudden.”

“I killed a demon’s best friend,” Spyder said. “Lulu, put some stuff in a bag. You’re coming with me.”

“No, she’s not!” screamed Rubi. “I won’t let him hurt you, baby.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere, Spyder. I’m scared.”

“And you’re stoned, too. Listen, it’s not safe for you. If this curse or spell or whatever made people think I’m a killer, it means sooner or later, some of that’s going to land on you. If they can’t get to me, you’re next on the menu.”

“No! Don’t listen to him, Lulu. He’s sick. He’s a murderer!”

“I’m so sorry, Rubi. I like you. I really do.” Spyder held the bartender down and punched her as hard as he could across the jaw. Rubi was unconscious immediately.

“Rubi? Oh shit, Spyder.”

“Lulu, don’t fade on me now. We have to get you out of here.” He held up the dirty syringe. “If these deluded assholes don’t kill you, you’re going to do it yourself.”

He pulled her from the sofa and walked Lulu to the bedroom closet. “Get dressed,” he told her and grabbed the small leather backpack that Rubi always carried. Spyder dumped the contents on the bed and pulled shirts, underwear and socks from Lulu’s dresser, shoving them in the pack until it was full.

When he was done, Lulu was sitting quietly, dressed in a scuffed pair of Doc Martens, black jeans with ripped knees and a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt. Spyder put Lulu’s favorite 50s gas station attendant jacket on her and led her to back to the living room. Rubi hadn’t moved. Spyder knelt and listened to make sure she was breathing all right. She was. He got some ice from the freezer, wrapped it in a washcloth and laid it on Rubi’s jaw. He dialed 911. When the operator came on, Spyder said, “There’s been an accident. A woman’s hurt,” and gave the address.

“Bye Rubi,” said Lulu as Spyder led her out of the building. “Hold on to me,” he told her as they got on the bike. Lulu wrapper her arms around his waist and leaned heavily on his back. Spyder kicked the Dead Man’s Ducati into gear and took back streets across town to a twenty-four-hour diner he knew down by the waterfront.

For all her scars and mad despair, Lulu seemed better after a second cup of coffee. She took a long breath and even smiled the now familiar raw flesh smile.

“Aren’t we a pair? A couple of real desperadoes. Like those kids in Badlands. Kit and…who was his girlfriend?”

“Sissy Spacek.”

“Even though she was Carrie and had that crazy mind zap thing going, I think I’d rather be Martin Sheen. That okay with you, Sissy?”

“A man likes feeling pretty sometimes.”

“You sure got a purty mouth,” Lulu said, in her best Deliverance hillbilly drawl.

They drank coffee, ate pie and french fries, and Spyder watched the clock over the counter creep ever so slowly toward dawn.

“So, Sissy…”

“Holly. Her character’s name was Holly.”

“So, Ms. Holly, what happens to a couple of outlaws like us, hopped up on caffeine and sugar, and on the lam?”

“I figure it’s a lot like the movie, really,” said Spyder. “We leave here, catch a ride and head straight to Hell.”