Lust Demented

{VI}

RUMBLING. A STORM WAS CREEPING up. Not bolts, but white flashes ready to blanket Brooklyn’s bellyland. The first drops sounded like the neighborhood kids were dumping pails off the deserted factory rooftops. Outside Gloom’s house a cop chatted up the driver of a yellow cab. I got in without bothering to say where I was going. It was a relief to be free of the dicks breathing down my neck. Anytime I tried to envision Percy’s ceremonious corpse, I could only see my own.

“Some writer’s bar on Bowery and Houston is where the cop told me to drop you. That okay with you?” The transsexual cabbie’s raspy Macy’s fragrance aisle accent shook with the cab as we rattled through the potholes. Long hair dangled on the divider.

“Yeah, but take your time. No rush.” I wanted to get back to it. I needed to write. Make sense of it all.

“I spit verse there sometimes.” The cabbie took both hands off the wheel, interlocking ten fingers and flexing both biceps.

“Oh…”

“Taxi-poems, I guess you’d call them.”

“Yeah…” My brain was leaking all over its empty page. The chaos crackling above felt right on target. All I needed was the rain.

“I saw you made the news.” The driver turned completely facing me in an effort to engage me. “Curiousity got the better of me and I took a spin to see for myself.”

A small flat screen television was pinned smack dab in the middle of the back of the front seat, strategically below the partition which had a little moveable drawer where you could slide the money through the bulletproof glass like a late night liquor store.

“TV repeats every fifteen minutes or so. Gives me a fucking migraine. Every time I turn the volume off, a fare turns it back on. I hear this city’s sickness in my sleep. It’s one thing to read the paper in the morning… another thing to listen to it for your entire shift.” The cabbie was really able to carry on a conversation with herself. Definitely a writer.

“Wait. This is it… here it comes.” The rain began to come down harder. A smooth layer of careening water covered the windows erasing the outside world. A hotel restaurant scene appeared and disappeared in a matter of seconds replaced by a pearly-smiled reporter who appeared a little too joyful to be reporting a murder. The little screen filled with images of Percy’s townhouse.

*****Today steps from Gramercy Park a typically peaceful street was the site of a vicious, cold-blooded homicide. It was here where publishing czar Percy Featherton was found savagely murdered in his lavish townhouse. The pages from his most recent success A Greater Truth were found torn and scattered over his dead body. The book was a stylish mystery written by his wife and protégé Missy Featherton. Police have taken into custody Michele Giacomo Aurelio Faro who was discovered at the scene in a state of confusion. Bizarrely he seems to be attempting to take credit for a book he didn’t write*****

“That’s some long name you got.” The driver looked back at me instead of the road, bulldozing forward.

“Yeah. I’m surprised they didn’t butcher it. Did it sound like I was guilty?”

“I don’t know I just met you. In this country…”

“She made me sound guilty. Didn’t she?”

“Mr. Farrow it made you sound like a man who’s seen better days.”

“Why didn’t they say I wrote the book? Why did they give Missy credit as the author?”

“I suppose because her name is on the cover.”

“I wrote it.”

“No shit?”

“The cops believed me.”

“You believe that they believed you? You wouldn’t be the first killer to ride in this car… this planet’s outside its head. Just when you let your guard down…. WA-BAM!” Electric sky followed by a thunderous boom.

“I’m no killer. I’m just a… just a friend of the dead.” Construction cranes hung above us. The overseers were forcing futuristic change. A neighborhood famous for its anonymity in the past was transformed see-through. All the buildings going up were all windows. You could see the new neighbors cozying in. You could hear them pop their corks.

“Afraid somebody’s after you in particular or just all the writers they can find?”

“Somebody’s exterminating writers and I’m heading to a room full of them. What are your plans for the night?”

“What do you want to take me out on the town or use me for a shield?”

“A shield from the shield.”

“Gotta keep the meter moving. I suggest the same to you.” The driver shrugged me off, pulling over across the street from the club. I placed the twenty in the partition’s pay slot only to be refused.

“Nothing disgusts me more than a bum scheming to take credit for someone else’s work. I hope you finally get picked out of the crowd.” The cabbie grilled me with a lippy smile through the rearview. I lifted the bill high like a hypnotist. Gently laying the green on the back seat followed with a middle finger.

It was always raining on the Bowery. The door slammed. The cab’s spinning wheels showered me. I was alone for the first time since I stumbled upon Percy’s cold cadaver. I found a seat on the curb. The entire city was just a fucking puddle to make a mess in. I became fixated on a paper coffee cup overflowing water from the storm. The soiled cup wouldn’t fall over no matter how hard the rain came down. I put the cup to my lips and sipped. I was drinking the city itself. The familiar taste of millions of overflowing dreams. It tasted natural, like licking your own blood to stop the bleeding.