Hell's Half Acre

twenty-five.

WHAT WAS AND WHAT WILL NEVER BE ARE NOTHING TO ME. My head and heart are upside down. Jude is a married woman. She’s married to John Ransom Miller. The way she explained it to me, she got bored with him. She left him but never got around to divorcing him. Why would she bother, she asked. A divorce required paperwork, and paperwork creates a trail. She had simply disappeared, erasing her identity behind her. Jude had been expensively trained by the government to become a fucking shadow in the rain. People generally did not find Jude unless she found them first, and the people she found were generally sorry.

But it’s a small world, and six degrees of separation are like a ticking clock. She had never told me about him, and I suppose that should hurt me somehow. Maybe there’s something wrong with me but everything I feel right now can be gathered into one cupped hand. I feel the fading rush of being surprised, the stupidity of not knowing, which tastes a little like dogshit in my mouth. The most clear and present thing I feel is the residual echo of Jude’s shame and self-hatred. And I am not one to judge. I had been married before I met her too, and I had rarely spoken to her of Lucy. The only difference was that Lucy was dead.

Jude had a sniper’s brain, though. She lived in a world that was defined by mathematical probabilities, and I’m sure that in her mind Miller had been as good as dead. The version of her that had been married to him was therefore dead, too. But still, Miller represented a massive loose end, and Jude did not tolerate loose ends, which made me think she was afraid of him.

The way she told it was flat, unemotional.

She had vanished into the ether and begun freelancing. She had done a few contract hits, but mainly she’d been a hired seeker. If you had wealth and you wanted to recover something that was impossible to find, a stolen Van Gogh, a rare religious artifact, or a military document that didn’t officially exist, you hired Jude. She had done very well, living a shadow existence free of relationships, sleeping in posh hotels, working only when she needed to, or when a job appealed to her. Miller had rarely, if ever, crossed her mind. She knew that her husband worked for the Cody family, but she’d never met any of them, never given them any thought. They were public people whose activities were generally aboveboard, and they weren’t the kind of people who had occasion to employ her. But one day an obscenely rich drug and weapons trafficker in Texas had hired Jude to find a kidney of an uncommon blood type, and that was how she found me and fell into a relationship. The relationship took her to South America on the run, where she had needed to make money. She had been trained as a field surgeon in the army, and she learned early on that there was good money to be had doing procedures that regular doctors would not do, so she set up shop in Mexico City. I knew this story, of course. I was there, holding the bucket. She performed a couple of expensive fetish amputations for rich Americans who recommended her to their friends, and eventually a very disturbed man who looked like a quarterback gone soft had come to us and paid Jude twenty-five grand to cut off his left hand. That man, as it turned out, happened to be MacDonald Cody, and when he saw Jude on the street in New Orleans he was being groomed by his family to make a run at the senate, and it had been only days before Miller found us.

I find Molly in her bedroom, reading. She has changed into black leather pants and an impossibly small, transparent T-shirt that says pornstar across the tits. I stare at her.

What? she says.

I don’t like those pants. You look like Jude.

Why don’t you suck my dick?

That’s nice. Now you sound like her.

I’m sorry, she says. I’m just trying to get a handle on my character. I don’t want her to be too passive.

Uh-huh.

What do you think? she says.

About what?

My character, she says. Do you think she’s tough enough?

I close my eyes. Do I think Molly is tough enough? No, not really. Molly is too neurotic and fragile. Molly is sweet but there’s something ghostly about her and you get the feeling she’s not gonna make it.

Molly stares at me.

I’m sorry, I say. This thing with the kid is making me…uneasy.

Did you see him?

Yes.

How is he?

He’s a nice kid. His name is Sam.

Is he okay, though?

He’s scared. What the hell do you think?

Molly hesitates. I think he would break my heart.

There is an incessant grinding noise coming from down the hall and suddenly I don’t want to talk about the kid anymore. I have a powerful urge to rip off my own head. Or Molly’s head. The grinding noise is slowly but surely eating into my spine. I have a beauty of a headache, a whopper. I push through the silver wings to the bathroom and commence to root around in Molly’s medicine cabinet for pills. The grinding noise is louder in the bathroom. It’s coming through the pipes, it’s echoing. I want a muscle relaxer, something in the narcotic family. I want a big glass of whiskey but I don’t care to wander around the house anymore so I eat a Valium and two aspirins and chase them with a chewable vitamin C.

What the fuck is that noise? I say.

What noise?

That grinding noise down the hall.

Oh, she says. Huck and Jeremy are constructing something in the dining room. We’re shooting the dinner party scene in a few hours.

Fabulous. I sit in the green chair and close my eyes. Then open them. What dinner party scene?

Molly frowns. I think it’s one of the new scenes John added to the script.

Brief, awkward silence. What color would they be? says Molly.

I hold my head. What color would what be? I say.

Those Nazi lampshades. Do you think they would be pink or yellow?

What?

You know. The Nazis made lampshades from the skin of death camp victims, supposedly.

I stare at her, helpless. What the fuck are you talking about?

It’s a line from a Sylvia Plath poem.

Okay.

Do you like poetry? she says.

No. I don’t like poetry.

Why not?

I don’t know. Because I’m empty inside. Because I have a headache.

But you’re such a good kisser.

Have you been talking to Jude?

No, she says. Why?

Because Jude has a funny theory about murderers and poets being the best kissers and now I wonder if you and she are only pretending to dislike each other.

Molly stares at me. Are you a murderer?

I have never kissed you, I say.

Anyway, she says. Pink or yellow?

I don’t understand this conversation.

Molly rolls over and stares at me. I’m reading lines from the script. You and I have a scene later where we discuss Sylvia Plath.

Oh, I say. Of course.

Molly smiles at me and she looks so sweet and normal I feel insane. I cover my eyes with my hands. I try to crush my eyes into my skull.

Are you okay? she says.

No, I don’t think so.

Molly sighs. I think John just wants us to go mad and kill each other.

Long beat.

He’s succeeding, I say. And those lampshades would definitely be yellow.

The grinding noise stops, mercifully. Then immediately resumes. I light a cigarette and notice that my hands are twitching.

I don’t know, says Molly. I think they would be pink.

Molly, I say. I have to get out of the house.

The grinding?

The grinding.

Let’s go somewhere, she says.

Do you want to go shopping with me?

Where? she says.

I explain that I want to get the boy some action figures, that if he has his own little army of five-inch superheroes to wreak imaginary mayhem with, maybe he won’t be lonely. Molly kisses me, a quick darting kiss on the mouth and I remember something my redneck baseball coach once told me, perverse but true. Be kind to dogs and children, he said. Women love that shit.

And so we take the motorcycle across town to a Toys-R-Us.

It’s an American afternoon, by god.

The parking lot is a shiny wasteland of family cars and minivans and I wish the sun were not so bright. I wish the sun would fuck off for a while. The statistics claim that people in the Northwest kill themselves at a much higher rate than those in any other region, presumably because of the endless rainfall. But it seems to me that the opposite should be true, that the unfortunate souls who are confronted day after day by the glaring sun would be the ones most likely to reach for the sleeping pills. The sun is neither flattering nor sympathetic. The average American is afflicted with some combination of bad skin and bad hair, bad posture and bad shoes. Bad habits and bad genes and bad taste and bad fucking luck and the sun seeks out such flaws with the cool, detached efficiency of a sniper.

Just ramble down to the beach on Labor Day weekend. Take a good look around.

Once inside the store, I relax a bit. There is music in the air-the theme song from the recent Winnie-the-Pooh movie featuring Tigger, a happy wacky little tune about the semi-charmed life that is just perfect for bouncing and therefore perfect for Tigger. But the lyrics are not so cheerful, however. I may be ignorant about contemporary poetry, but it seems to me that the song is about the perilous highs and lows of being a crystal meth addict. And this puts a smile on my face. I turn to Molly and she too is smiling. It is one of those goofy moments that needs no words and I feel like my head will soon be in a box.

I take Molly’s hand and we literally scamper through the place. Down the gloomy aisle of stuffed animals waiting to be loved and past the freakishly pink Barbie aisle, then past the brightly colored plastic swing sets and sandboxes shaped like turtles and bumble bees. Past the gleaming rows of bicycles and tricycles and red wagons and midget electric cars. Turn a corner and come upon the action figure aisle. I stop and suck in my breath with reverence. This is a kid’s promised land.

Molly laughs at the expression on my face.

I reach for a shopping cart and start loading up on little role models. Explaining to Molly as I go that Batman is indispensable. The Dark Knight, baby. Spider-Man is a nerd and talks a lot of trash but he has the coolest powers. Wolverine is your ultimate psycho and what kid doesn’t want adamantine claws. The Silver Surfer is the mad philosopher, the cursed poet, Hamlet on a magic surfboard. And then there’s Ghost Rider. Obscure as hell but I was always partial to him because he has a flaming skull and he’s not always a nice guy. Ghost Rider is sometimes a bad guy, and this is an important lesson for a kid to learn. I pass over Superman because he was such a bore. He was like the president of the student council. And he hung out with Aquaman, over there in the Justice League. Now there was a worthless ninny if ever there was one. Aquaman talked to the fishes. He was handy during an oil spill or a tropical storm, maybe. But if somebody was robbing a bank, where the fuck was Aquaman?

Women, says Molly. What about some women?

Of course. I immediately reach for Catwoman.

Catwoman? says Molly. The femme fatale from hell?

Or heaven, I say. It’s just a matter of perspective.

How so?

If she’s handing your lunch to you, then maybe you don’t like Catwoman. And rightly so. But if she’s giving you a superfreaky blowjob in the back of the Batmobile, then she’s your best friend.

Uh huh. Does the Batmobile even have a backseat? says Molly.

I scratch my head.

And does a five-year-old need to contemplate such things?

No. I guess not.

Now we argue about female superheroes, briefly and with a fair amount of giggling. I am not wavering on Catwoman so Molly insists on Jean Grey, on the grounds that she’s essentially the opposite of Catwoman.

Jean Grey is an intellectual, says Molly. And she doesn’t generally flash her tits.

Okay, I say. Wolverine likes her, anyway.

I throw in a sweet Batmobile with a lot of high-tech gear and a few villains, explaining to Molly that superheroes tend to lose their will to live without bad guys to tangle with. And then we are on our way to the cash registers when I am temporarily mesmerized by the Hot Wheels aisle and I flash back to the elaborate, multileveled, and structurally unsound metropolis that I constructed from those plastic orange tracks as a boy.

The silence of snow falling outside.

The oppressive smell of garlic and mushrooms and red pepper. There was spaghetti for dinner and now my mother and father linger in the kitchen to finish a bottle of wine. Their voices rise and fall and slip easily from flirtatious to hostile and back to tender and estranged and all the while it is impossible to say whether or not they are happy.

And here comes Carly Simon on the record player, her voice hoarse and splintered by static and fine scratches in the vinyl. You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you.

This song was the soundtrack of my childhood, and I often wonder about its long-term effects.

You’re so vain.

I am maybe seven years old, sitting on the floor of my room in cowboy pajamas. I am surrounded by the small orange universe of my own design and even though I lack the necessary vocabulary, I am no doubt contemplating the laws of physics, the inevitability of inertia and gravity. I place a very small turtle on one of the orange tracks, the kind of turtle that cost ten cents at the pet store and usually died within a week. I select one of my fastest cars, a blue Corvette. I position the car at the top of the track and hold it there a moment, watching the turtle wiggle along the track. I release the blue Corvette and it drops straight down, as if falling down the sheer edge of a cliff, and crashes into the turtle with a nice meaty thud.

The turtle is knocked from the track and is dazed but not killed.

My parents are arguing now, or maybe not. Maybe one of them is seducing the other.

I return the turtle to the track and reach for another car. I reach for a glossy black Aston Martin and I am stupidly pleased to see that the cars are still exactly the same, composed not of plastic but actual metal and perfect to the tiny detail. The packaging has not changed and the Hot Wheels logo has not changed and a single car costs just a dollar, which seems to me a reasonable level of inflation over so many years.

Vertigo, dislocation. You’re so fucking vain.

Hey, says Molly. You okay?

What?

She takes the little car from me.

Don’t I look okay?

No, she says. You look like you’re going to cry, or throw up.

I’m not sure how to explain what happens next, but I reckon my head is still halfway morphed into the inarticulate seven-year-old cowboy-pajama-wearing version of Phineas and the only reasonable way that a boy can show a girl how much he likes her is to hurt her somehow.

Boy pokes girl, pinches girl, pulls girl’s hair.

Boy makes girl cry and everyone says oh, well. He just likes you. And how many battered wives and girlfriends soon to be murdered will stare at you with puffy, blackened white marble eyes and insist that their abusers love them. The words like slush from their mouths, because their lips are blackened.

Anyway. I regard Molly for a moment, then hit her.

What the fuck?

Molly backs away, her hand touching lightly the place just above her heart where my fist struck her. The blow was not terribly hard. But it was not gentle. And just as I am about to apologize, to attempt some lame explanation about Carly Simon and Hot Wheels, she hits me back. Her fist catches me like a hammer below the eye and I’m going to have a ripe blue shiner come morning. Molly holds her fist out away from her body and looks at it, fairly horrified.

Oh, my god. Oh god, she says. I’m sorry.

No, I say. That was the perfect thing to do.

I hold my arms out wide. It seems like the perfect moment for a slow, zooming close-up.