Dark End Of The Street

Chapter 50

Didn’t take but about two seconds for Perfect Leigh to spot a man in the first floor of the casino, not bad-looking, either, in kind of a bland-businessman way, and get that ride to Memphis. The man was even up about five hundred bucks at the blackjack table, but left it all just for a chance to take Perfect for a spin in his Lexus. He was nice and clean, thirtyish with a couple kids and a wife that didn’t like sex anymore, and even opened the door for Perfect when they got back to Midtown. She gave him a phony phone number, said she couldn’t wait to see him again, and walked the next two blocks to her real apartment.

Now, thank the Lord, she was drawing a bath while she lit a dozen or so colored candles around the big claw-foot tub. Get Tunica out of her mind.

Perfect removed her favorite plush terry-cloth robe and slid into the warm, soapy water. She wanted to lie in this tub till all of Levi Ransom had been soaked away. Then she’d drain the murky fluids that had filled her, towel off, and clean the tub with Clorox.

Only then could she become someone else and forget about this whole damned mess. Just like when she was a teenager and pretended that winning those god-awful pageants was such a wonderful thing, back when she had to grin so hard her gums and lips hurt. Grin till her mother had grabbed the trophy and they were headed back to Coahoma County.

That fat woman would do anything to have her doll win. She’d coat her in that pancake makeup and foul-smelling Wal-Mart perfume she bought by the gallon and just hug and hug her like a prized pet. The thing that Perfect couldn’t understand, she thought as she ran more hot water into the tub, was why her mother had to cheat. Just like Ransom, she had to know they’d won even before she’d taped her daughter’s boobs together or watched her perform the Nancy Sinatra baton routine.

Perfect closed her eyes, submerged her head for a moment, nothing but the darkness and candles in the room, that terrific soapy water flowing, swooshing inside her. She ducked under, bubbles pouring through her ears, water flowing into her nose. She let out a long breath, screaming into the water.

After the bath, she lay naked on her huge red couch watching her legs in the seven antique mirrors that hung along the wall by the television and in a little mirrored jewel box she’d picked up in New Orleans. Mirrors everywhere. Gold. Silver. Antique. Some still in boxes. Sterling silver hand mirrors and ones with beveled edges and maybe thirty compacts she’d collected since she was sixteen, in a little basket on the coffee table.

She yawned and stretched, feeling with delight her rib cage and firm ass.

She picked up one of the many compacts and twirled it in her fingers as she flopped onto her back and moved her hands over her breasts, when suddenly there was a thud on her little balcony.

She saw the shifting figure of a man in black. Had to have crawled up three stories to reach her. Perfect had a gun in her bedroom and a set of steak knives in the kitchen. She slowly let her bare toes touch the carpet; she didn’t want him to think she knew.

But he saw her. He was watching her with those damned black-ringed eyes.

Jon had dropped to his knees in the cold onto a big pile of leaves that had fallen from a nearby oak. He had on this sad face. Humble as hell and holding some more of those nasty grocery-store flowers.

She shook her head and started to drop the blinds over the window. Her heart ramming against her rib cage.

The window exploded with glass.

A large pot filled with a dead palm tree cracked and scattered dirt all over her floor. She scrambled to her bedroom but only got halfway when he jumped her from behind and started prying her mouth open. He stuffed a handful of pills deep down into her mouth, so far that she started gagging, while he rubbed her throat making her swallow.

He pushed her wrists to the hard wooden floor and stuck a knee into her stomach. He lay his head across her bare breasts, like a child would, listening to her heart. She couldn’t move with his sinewy weight holding her. “We just stay here,” he whispered. All right? Then I got somewhere special we can go. It’s a real happy place.”

“I ’ll cut your fucking nuts off,” Perfect Leigh said, slurring her words and walkin’ crooked toward the exit of Libertyland as an orange-black sky twisted overhead. “I want to scream but it makes me sick. I’m not feeling well.”

The little white lights on the trees had just flickered on at dusk. Families pushed strollers and carried huge teddy bears and hustlin’ young black kids in Grizzlies jerseys and gold bracelets prowled nearby. The air smelled like popcorn and hotdogs with an edge of baby powder.

“Miss Perfect, let’s get on the Zippin Pippin one more time,” Jon said.

She still couldn’t see why this place was so important. Jon guessed she couldn’t have known this was the old fairgrounds that E used to rent out all night for Him and the boys. They’d run the whole damned park till the sun came up; E sometimes ridin’ the Pippin all night long.

“Amusement parks are for morons and white trash,” she said. “Goddamn, I feel sick. Jesus.”

Her eyes got real lazy and she stumbled, almost falling to the sidewalk. She caught herself, but one of her high heels came off and Jon walked back to pick it up.

“Here you go,” he said, a true gentleman.

“Take me home now, Jon. Or whatever your real name is.”

“Why do you say such things, Miss Perfect?” He felt his legs starting to jump and a jolt of electricity shoot into the base of his brain. “You doubt my Christian name?”

She laughed it out before she looked at his face and poked out her lower lip. “Oh, little Johnny, did I make you sad? I’m sorry. You are. You are Jon Burrows. Okay. That’s fine by me.”

The lines in her face made puzzles in the falling light. Brown dead leaves skittered down the concrete walkway that led over to the Pippin and for some reason Jon felt very sad. He zipped up his leather coat and checked his new boots for any mess.

But she didn’t move. He felt for a knife in his pocket and it gave him comfort. His breath comin’ real fast through his nose.

She laughed and said, “I’m going to scream now.”

“Cops are lookin’ for you,” he said.

“What?”

“That nigra woman is alive. You didn’t even kill her.” Jon leaned in close and smelled her neck. “You want another ride, then. Right? If not, I’ll take this knife in my pocket and carve up that pretty face.”

He pointed out the Zippin Pippin, one of the holy relics of Memphis, standing tall and wooden against the night sky like a dang wonder of the world. “Come on.”

Her skin was cold at the base of her spine as the Pippin cranked to the top of its wooden platform ready to shoot down that hill and launch into all them curves and twists and gut-churners.

He remembered comin’ to the park when he was a kid and his mamma spendin’ every dime she’d made down at the Zippymart so they could stay all day at the park and get treated like somethin’ special. She’d buy him hotdogs and cotton candy till his belly would swell and them dark circles under his eyes would seem to disappear in the fun-house mirrors.

The Pippin dipped down low again and he heard Miss Perfect scream loud.

And as they cranked real slow up another hill, waitin’ for another drop, he whispered, “I loved you, but Ransom wants you dead.”

P erfect’s whole body shook and her stomach growled. She tried to run to the dark cove of that bathroom underneath a big oak, but he wouldn’t let go of her wrist. He was just a flurry of white sound and booming and swirling black and red light that ran around her brain making it buzz and fry. Goddamn, what had he done to her? What had he given her?

“Fuck you,” she said, not sure if the words were coming out or not. “Stay away.”

He reached his whole arm around her waist and walked her back to an arcade where every plinking sound and flush of color and noise made her even more sick. She thought about that woman she’d shot and even that family with the dead daughter back in Tunica and she started praying that she’d live. She would not end up a loser and dumped and used like they had been. She would get out of this.

She coughed, heaved, and puked all over herself.

Her lips and face felt disgusting, covered in vomit, her head sunk to her shoulder and she could smell her own odor and it sickened her.

She tried to stand by herself but her feet hung loose and useless like a twisted doll. She tried to be rigid but only slunk more.

“What did you do? What did you do to me?”

“I just gave you a few vitamins, woman,” he said.

Her eyes closed again and she felt her stomach keep grumbling and her bladder and bowels fill. She tried to pinch herself and stay tight but the pressure kept on building as her eyes filled with water. Her long legs were loose and exposed through her skirt and her blouse had torn at the shoulder. Dirt on her knees. Puke on her face. Her beautiful blond hair a tangled mess.

She was in a bathroom now, her panties full and soaked and she lay in a corner by a toilet. Little black hairs and smeared dirt and urine were all around her. She felt her skin get tight and the need to puke. She lathered her hands together and rubbed them all over her skirt and looked at her dirty arms and crawled farther into the nasty, horrible corner. She screamed real low and covered her face, tried to curl into a little ball like an animal. She closed her eyes real tight.

She was nasty and useless and no one would ever want her. She screamed again, it was hoarse and low and she could barely hear herself.

She peered up at the wavering figure of Jon. Clean and black-leathered and smiling down at her with his hardened blue eyes and sharpened sideburns. He kicked at her knees trying to bring them back into a more ladylike position. She pulled the material of her skirt over her soiled panties.

“Why are you doing this? Why?”

“Who am I?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Who am I?”

“Jon.”

“Who?”

“Jon.”

Then she understood and she felt her neck fill with blood and heat and she smelled the horrible smells coming from her armpits. Her head cleared for a moment with her own anger. She gripped the edge of the toilet and wavered to her feet. The bathroom stall had been scrawled on with dirty words and phone numbers. The toilet hadn’t been flushed and it looked like the water had been drained from a swamp. She clenched her teeth and stared right into his eyes and wiped her polluted hands on his leather jacket.

“Fuck you!” she screamed. “You are nobody! Nobody.”

His lip quivered and he snarled before slapping her hard across the face. “Don’t you ever say that. I am more somebody than you’ll ever be. I am somebody!”

“No, you’re not,” she said, knowing she was dead anyway. “Do you even know who you are? Are you Elvis? Are you? Are you even Jon? What happened, Jon? Can’t you speak? You pathetic little shit.”

His eyes squinted and the black circles under his eyes became even more pronounced. Like sharp sickles.

She jabbed his chest with her finger again.

“Where’s your mamma, Jon?”

He was crying now and covering his ears as if a high-pitched noise leaked into the room.

“She burned up just like those books you carry with you, didn’t she? Did you do it? Did you set fire to her house? What did she do, Jon? Why did you kill your mamma?”

“No!” he screamed. “It’s not true. My name is Jesse Garon and I’m from Mississippi and I moved to Memphis to make something of myself. My mamma lives in Hollywood and she’s livin’.”

Exhausted, he laid his back to the bathroom stall and cried as he pulled a long yellow scarf from his black leather jacket. “This was hers. He gave it to her. She kept it her whole life in her sweet, little pillow. Little sweet girl.”

She laughed, tasting the blood from her lip. She laughed and watched him smelling his scarf and covering his face with it as if he could hide.

“Ransom will kill you,” she said and stood. “He needs me.”

“Ransom tole me make it look all random and such,” he said. “They’ll find you late tonight. All twisted up and nasty.”

“Fuck you, Absalom Roach.”

Suddenly, he leaped from the ground and exploded his hands against her chest, slamming her against the metal wall. She choked, not being able to catch her breath. Her eyes filled with tears. Little short breaths of nothing.

Jon briskly twisted the yellow scarf against her neck and cried and babbled to himself, like the cooing of a baby, and then hummed a song that she’d heard before.

“Wise men say, only fools rush in,” he sang, almost as if a lullaby.

She heard her voice box crack and she fell to her ass with a squish, the broken, filthy writing on the wall around her bringing no comfort. Her hands felt wet, touching the dead hairs and urine and dirt and she cried looking at a single sentence scratched into the bathroom wall with a key: PRIDE GOETH BEFORE DESTRUCTION, AND AN HAUGHTY SPIRIT BEFORE A FALL. PROVERBS 16: 17 – 19.

The last thing she heard was Jon singing directly and softly into her ear, “ ’Cause I can’t help, falling in love with you.”