Hell's Half Acre

nineteen.

THE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM IS LARGE and relatively spartan with a black-and-white tile floor and a white clawfoot bathtub. Toilet and sink and shower with smoky glass door. Black towels. The closet is empty. In the shower are expensive shampoo and conditioner and black soap. I have brought my glass of gin with me. I am smoking a cigarette. I drop my clothes to the floor and consider the bath. I don’t much like baths. I don’t care to sit in a pool of my own filth but I have always loved the clawfoot bathtub, as an abstract concept. And it reminds me of my mother’s house. I stand there, naked and smoking. It is everything I can do to stop from looking in the mirror. The coke is causing a nasty rattle in my skull and I don’t want to descend into any prolonged examination of self. I have an unfortunate tendency to cut my hair in these situations, to somehow mangle myself. There are knife scars on my arms and chest that no one can account for. I drop my cigarette into the toilet and crank up the hot water in the shower.

I scrub myself fiercely with the black soap. It smells of opium, of wormwood. There is something visually disturbing about black soap and somehow this appeals to me. I wash my genitals with curious fanaticism. I let the water pound down on my head. I am obliterated by needles and I am slowly disappearing into the smoke of irrational shame. If not for the night in jail and a fear of parasites, I’d probably not bother to wash my hair. The shampoo is also black. I dump a small amount of it into my hand and drag it through my hair, then rinse. I sink into the corner of the shower with glass of gin in hand and breathe the hot steam.

Jude opens the shower door and stands there, looking at me. I am crouched in the corner, rubbery and wet and dizzy from the heat and under her gaze I feel like Gollum with my empty glass in hand. I have lost my precious. I want to ask her a riddle. What is the shadow with green skin that is not man and not woman, the shadow that stretches before us and becomes another.

It’s not fair to ask us what it’s got in its nasty pockets.

Jude still wears that green dress.

She mutters something that I can’t hear.

What? I say.

She smiles and steps into the shower with me. The water crashes down on us and soon her hair is wet and hanging like black ribbons in her face. Her dress is soaked, a dark green secondary flesh. Jude kisses my neck, my chest and belly. I am thirsty and I want her. I reach for her but I am clumsy and my muscles are atrophied from the heat. I am briefly detached from my arms and legs. I want to drink her, to eat her wet eucalyptus skin. I want to rip the green dress from her body but I am floating somewhere above her and I have a magnificent almost distended erection. I pull Jude close to me and lift the wet green dress up over her waist and slip inside her and she is so wet and my thoughts are so splintered that it is hard to say where either of us begins or ends but soon the noise of our breathing is like the rattle and hiss of new fire.

I read somewhere that more than half of all household accidents take place in the shower and I am not surprised. It’s very slippery and dangerous in there, what with your arms and legs wet and twisted into rubber doll parts that don’t quite belong to you. Your mouth is full of hair and you can’t breathe and you can’t talk and within five minutes I come inside her, which is exactly what she wanted. Because I have been unable to come lately. And because it makes her feel pretty when I come inside her, or so she says.

Are you joking? I say.

But she just smiles at me. If I were her shrink, I would probably say it has to do with power. I would speculate that she was anorexic as a girl. I would root around in her skull for some barely remembered incident of childhood fondling or worse. But I’m not her shrink and wouldn’t want to be. I would rather eat my own eyeballs with a spoon than wiggle around in that head for money. As for birth control, well. Jude told me a few nights ago, in bed at the King James, that she doesn’t bother about birth control anymore because she had her tubes tangled sometime after the unwanted pregnancy in New Orleans.

Ten minutes later we sit on the black-and-white floor. The air is white with mist and we pass a damp cigarette back and forth. I’ve put my borrowed pants back on and Jude has wrapped herself in a massive blue towel. She’s wrapped in a chunk of sky and only her feet poke out. Her feet are beautiful, but not so pretty as Molly’s. I shut my eyes. I have a sudden urge to grind the cigarette out on my arm.

What are we doing here? I say.

Jude blows smoke at me. Don’t, she says.

What?

Don’t think about it so much. And don’t try to suck me into some philosophical debate.

Okay.

Brief silence while I wonder who is going to die.

What shall I think about?

Jude shrugs. The sleeping arrangements, she says.

What about them?

You’re sleeping with Molly tonight.

Jude is not kidding, it seems. She gives me that look of stone and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. She lets the blue towel fall to the floor and stands there a minute, naked and foreboding. Now she gives her hair a shake. The water flies from her in tiny rays of broken light.

You’re kidding, I say.

I’m not kidding.

Jesus.

What’s the problem, she says. You want her, don’t you?

Maybe. But I might rather make that choice on my own.

Jude shrugs. I don’t see how it makes a difference.

And where are you sleeping?

Wherever I want to, she says. With menace.

With Miller, you mean.

I have to get into character, she says. We both do.

Give me a fucking break, Jude.

Listen, she says. We are shooting this goddamn movie with Miller. When it’s done, he will bring Cody to me. Until then, we cooperate.

I watch as she takes a robe from the back of the door, a man’s robe. Black with green checks. She pulls it tight around her and she doesn’t look like any of this bothers her much.

And this doesn’t bother you? I say.

Weren’t you listening? says Jude. Monogamy is hopelessly antiquated. And therefore defunct.

You want me to sleep with her.

Jude stares, never flinching. Yes. Tonight, I want you to sleep with Molly.

I just nod. All right, I say. Anything for you, baby.

I walk down a hallway of muted yellow light. Molly is waiting for me behind door number three and I feel flushed, nervous. Like I’m on a blind date. And Jude is right, sort of. Monogamy is defunct, an antiquated concept that never held much water. I had tried to educate myself while I wandered the desert, chasing Jude’s shadow, and one of the books I slogged through was Darwin’s The Origin of Species, or one of its sequels. I wouldn’t call it a page-turner but one thing was pretty clear: Darwin was a maniacal old fucker half-addled by cocaine but the man was no dummy and he wouldn’t have bet a nickel on monogamy hanging around as long as it has.

Monogamy doesn’t work unless it rises up from the bones. Because it promises nothing but fear and tension when forced on you. It fills you up with despair where there might be joy. It shoves guilt and paranoia and self-loathing down your throat, if you don’t truly want it. Jude and I were monogamous when we were together, for the most part. And monogamy was a fucking drag. It seemed like a social obligation, an arbitrary puritanical construct, and after a while we started lying to each other. When I was with Jude, I pretended to know what I wanted, and with a hellish quickness my face became a jackal’s mask. Then I took a bubble bath one night and a gang of psychos ruined her face before we figured the shit out.

I used to watch her sometimes, when she was painting her toenails or brushing her teeth or yawning on the floor in her underwear, flicking through a glossy woman’s magazine. I loved her. I didn’t love her. Once, I watched her take the television apart in the middle of the night because she was bored. I watched her reduce the television to a scrap heap of apparently ruined fuses and wires. Then I watched her put the television back together and was not surprised when the reception was improved. I thought I loved her, then. I watched her smash the same television to bits two days later because she didn’t like some snotty actress and in that moment, I thought I loved her. But there was fear between us, truly. There is always fear but when two artists, two liars, or two killers occupy the same house and sleep in the same bed, rage runs rampant and becomes entangled with mistrust and doubt and alcoholic despair. The love between them isn’t safe in the bones, the marrow.

Jude doesn’t belong to me and never did. I don’t belong to her because our love is unsafe in the marrow.

Therefore, Jude and I are each set free with the flickering hope that we may come back to each other and the knowledge that we may not. And in the meantime we may as well fuck other people and we may as well be casual and nihilistic about it. It doesn’t mean anything because we don’t belong to each other, at least, not now. One day, though. One day. I might just come around a corner and stumble into the version of Jude that I belong to. And when I find her, I just hope I have the good sense to give myself to her.

This is the moment when the blood throttles up to eleven and everything else slows down. The air around me glimmers and I can see the world a little too clearly. I can see the imperfections in the wood and brick and I can see the fine threads in the carpet under my feet. I can hear Miller breathing downstairs. I imagine Jude tying him up, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. The door at the end of the hall is a little black square that from six seven eight feet away looks much too small for me to pass through. It’s just large enough for a little British girl or a fat white rabbit and I love it when pop culture bleeds through to the cellular level. The endless memories that are not my own.

I stop at the door and listen.

She’s got a razor sadness about her, nothing a hundred dollars won’t fix. Tom Waits is playing softly in Molly’s room. Rain Dogs. Bob Frost is a good egg. This is encouraging, I think. Any woman who likes Tom Waits is bound to have sweetness in her heart. I open the door without knocking. Molly sits cross-legged on the bed, her hair hangs yellow and loose. The room is softly lit and eerily windowless. There’s a green armchair in one corner. The red walls are lined with bookshelves. Two silver curtains shaped like angel’s wings hang over a doorway opposite. The bed is small and puffy, with an iron frame. I’m sure it would make a hellish commotion during even the most careful sexual activity.

Molly’s feet are still bare. Hello, she says.

This is awkward and I wait for her to say Can I help you? But she smiles and shrugs slightly and I take it that she is expecting me.

This is awkward, I say.

No, she says. I like you. And we don’t have to do anything.

Oh. Thank god.

But you have to be nice to me.

I stare at her. It’s not a request I’m used to hearing.

Molly picks up a book and curls into a pool of lamplight. The bathroom is there, through the curtains, she says. If you want to brush your teeth.

Thanks. Do you mind if I smoke in here?

Molly shrugs and I sit down on the end of the bed. I dig out matches.

By the green chair, she says. There’s an ashtray.

I move to sit in the green chair. I smoke and watch her read for a while. It’s peaceful but weird, and I realize I’m unaccustomed to peace. Jude and I are rarely so quiet together.

What are you reading?

The Lover, she says. Margurite Duras. Have you read it?

No.

It’s pretty sexy, she says. And depressing. But it reads like film.

What’s it about?

She stares at me and I wonder if she suspects the truth, that I’ve seen the movie twice and, for perverse reasons of my own, don’t want to admit it. Molly smiles and before she can tell me what the book is about, I commence to babble at her.

It’s about obsession, I say. It’s about a French girl living in the Philippines. She wears a man’s fedora, which probably has to do with the fact that her father is dead or missing from the scene. I don’t remember which. Her mother is crazy and her brother is crazy and they have no money. Then she meets a very wealthy Chinese man and becomes his child lover and pretty soon she’s extracting money from him.

You’ve seen the movie, she says.

Yeah.

Why did you pretend to know nothing about it?

Because there’s something wrong with me.

Molly kneels on the bed, eyes bright. Her shirt hangs open as a promise. Throat and collarbone exposed. Her nipples are shadows behind pale camisole and I wonder what her hair smells like, what her skin tastes like.

You didn’t say a word about love, she says.

What about it?

Do you think she loved him, the Chinaman?

No. I think she loved the sex. She loved being the object of desire. But then, I haven’t read the book. I may be ignorant.

Are you in love with Jude?

Whoa.

I’m sorry, she says. Too personal?

No. But kind of sudden.

I’m sorry, she says. Anyway. Are you?

Fuck. You’re one of those people, I say.

I light another cigarette, still jumpy from that coke. Molly seems serene, though.

Which people? she says.

The relentless question people.

I’m just curious. And I think it’s relevant to the project.

Okay, then. I don’t know.

Why?

Jude and I have been apart for too long, I say. And when we were together, we went through some hairy shit, old-fashioned psycho-ward shit. And I don’t think we trusted each other, which is a problem. The sex was good, is good, but it has a lot more to do with domination and pain than actual tenderness.

You believe, though. You believe in love.

I have to believe in something.

Molly shrugs. Good answer.

Thanks, I say. I want to brush my teeth.

Okay, she says. There’s a spare toothbrush on the sink. Or you can use mine, the blue one. And there’s Valium in the medicine cabinet if you want it.

Valium, yes. I could use some of that.

She nods. You look a little…uneasy.

What about you, I say. Do you love Miller?

Molly sinks onto the bed, gazes up at the ceiling. He doesn’t love me, she says. He never loved me.

That isn’t what I asked you.

No, she says.

I wait for her to finish the thought but there’s no more coming. Her eyes are closed tight but she’s staring hard at something unseen.

I get up and walk through the silver wings. I lean on the sink with both hands and give myself a good long stare. I just wish I had a reliable smile. The sort of smile that flashes out of reflex, the smile that puts other humans at ease. I work on it for a minute but it’s just no good. I still look like Travis Bickle when I smile. I look like a young Robert De Niro with a bellyful of maggots and a ticklish hair up his ass. Best not to smile at all. But it will come in handy when I want to become Joe Blow and I might as well take care of my teeth. On the edge of the sink is a toothbrush still in the package. The kind the dentist gives you after he’s done fucking up your day. I flick at it with my finger and it spins slowly. Then I reach for the blue one in the pewter cup. Molly’s toothbrush, still wet. I have a feeling we’re going to be intimate.

When I come out of the bathroom the room is dark but for a guttering candle. Molly is tucked beneath the covers, shadowy and feline. I hesitate. This is a peculiar situation. I am about to crawl into bed with a woman I don’t really know. And yeah. I have done that before, numerous times. But I was typically a lot more fucked up on those occasions and there was a different energy in those rooms, with those nameless and faceless women. There was that underlying vibe of desperation and self-destruction, that slow aching psychological suicide by a thousand cuts that comes with meaningless sex. But I feel none of that now. Molly is just another human, with warm blood and fragile skin and a skull filled with her own angels and insects and childhood shadows. She wants nothing from me but kindness. I take off my clothes and blow out the candle, then creep into bed next to her.

She sleeps with her back to me. I move close enough to smell her hair but not close enough to poke her with my erection. Because that would be rude, I think. Molly wears a long white nightgown, silk with thin spaghetti straps. Her hair smells like the wind when there’s a storm coming. Her shoulders are pale and smooth as eggshells. She sighs, or growls. Then moves close to me. Molly presses herself against me and I realize that she wants to spoon, which seems bizarre to me, freakish.

But I know good and well who’s the freak in this bed. I’m just not used to this sort of thing. I can adjust, though. I tuck my penis out of the way so that it presses innocently against her thigh, then slip an arm under her neck and without really thinking about it, I find myself holding one of her breasts in my hand. As if someone just handed me a ripe melon and said with a sly smile, are you hungry old boy? I move my hand away and tell myself not to grope or fondle her again. I position my arms so that one hand is flat against her stomach and the other is resting on her shoulder. Molly is smaller, softer than Jude. Her bones are arranged differently and somehow her body is a better fit against mine. This feels absurdly good and it occurs to me that it is easier to find someone on this planet you want to fuck than someone you might really want to sleep next to.

In a city like San Francisco, you can throw a rock out your front door and hit someone with a nice ass and pretty brown eyes. But to find someone you want to fall asleep with, someone you want to breathe and dream next to, is terribly rare.

I kiss her softly on the back of the neck, just once. Good night, Molly.

I wear yellow gloves, yellow gloves stained with blood. I’m in a motel room with bright orange carpet the color of dull fire under plastic sheets. There’s a single naked light bulb above casting shadows like manic fingers. The bed is stripped of linens and covered in thick plastic. A tall pale handsome white man, early forties, is handcuffed to the bed. Jude stands over him and in this particular dream, her name is Jesse Redd. She wears a white raincoat, sprayed with blood, and holds an electric bone saw in gloved hands. I stand across from her holding bucket and sponge. Jude takes a breath, then resumes the task of hacking off this pale man’s left hand just above the wrist. I look at the man’s face, twisted and white with endorphins and sheer masochistic joy. He looks like a Heisman quarterback gone gray and this man is not a victim, but a client. He is paying us twenty-five thousand American dollars for this service. He has a profound amputee fetish, and he wants to become one. The handcuffs were his idea and he declined the use of ether. Jude is a field surgeon but this work requires very little skill. It requires steady hands and a belly of stone, which I lack. The one time I tried to wield the saw, I threw up a muddy puddle of beans and rice and tequila and I’ve been relegated to sponge duty since then.

This is the last one, I say.

What are you talking about?

I’m not kidding. I’d rather just kill people.

You’d rather kill people than what?

I’d rather kill people than mop up another drop of this motherfucker’s blood.

Wake up, she says.

I’m not kidding, Jude.

Wake up, says Molly. I am not Jude.

I pull myself out of a motel room that exists only in my own damaged head and false visions. Molly is beside me. The smell of wind and thin strong arms around me. I am covered in sweat and shivering, cold. Delirium tremens, my favorite new affliction. Molly tells me to hold on. She slips away from me and goes to the bathroom, returns with a warm washcloth and a small bottle of brandy. I reach for the bottle and she tells me to take small sips. Molly kisses my cheek, a cool dry kiss. She puts the washcloth on my forehead and gives me a cigarette.

Tell me, she says. Tell me about the dream.

And for an hour or so, Molly and I sit in the dark. I tell her a nasty bedtime story and she is so polite she never says a word about my tendency to cast Jude as a psycho in my dreams.