Alysse Aallyn

Category: Murder Confessions

  • Hant


    I guess you could say that when my mother died, I came out of the closet. And – unfortunately for me – so did she. Different closet, naturally.


    I’m one of those people born gay. It’s not just something I chose because there was nothing better on offer. And honestly, it had NOTHING to do with my mother. When I talked to the first lawyer he seemed to think that living with your mother until you’re forty and going to bed with women have to be two facts that have some sort of relationship. Not the case. Far from it.


    So I have to make the point that my mother wasn’t sexual to me. I doubt that she was ever sexual to anybody. People who think of their mothers sexually must have mothers a whole lot different from mine, that’s all I can say. You don’t think about the body under the apron on the person nagging you to finish the food on your plate. At least I don’t.


    I was a late-bloomer — over thirty before the penny finally dropped. I had rubbed bodies with girlfriends before, but I really didn’t think anything of it. If they had orgasms I sure as hell couldn’t tell. But then I was thirty-two and I met Eva. Eva was ripe. Eva was rich. Eva was honky-tonk come to life. She bleached her pubic hair with the reasoning that then it would become invisible and then she wouldn’t have to bother to shave. (NOT). That’s what drew me to her – this amazing woman with an explosion of Orphan Annie hair – a curly mirkin – coming out from under her bathing suit. I mean, you had to look inside, you know?

    So I was the aggressor. I let it all hang out, and she liked that. Constant sex is my recipe for love. I was amazed to discover – this was after three months of me doing everything to her – that she was a masseuse, for Chrissake. Her job was rubbing people’s bodies. (And she was not one of those whore masseuses. She had a degree and all that.)


    But when I was working her over I didn’t have those kinds of thoughts, hey, breasts just like my mother’s, a slit just like I came out of. I mean, that’s the furthest thing from your mind. But Eva and I were a short term thing.


    I lived with my mother because she had that huge house and because it was convenient. Check the “get ahead” literature and they’ll all tell you to get yourself a wife. Well, this was the best I could do.
    When my brother died, I became my mommy’s only kid. The rest of our relatives really didn’t want to have anything to do with us. According to Mom it was because of the divorce. Everybody dumped us. She didn’t take it well. Not too strong to say she flipped out. But there’s a lot of that going around as well as a lot of divorce. After the right to marry the right to divorce tags right along behind.


    My father’s family was no day at the beach, let me tell you. Too much emphasis on who sits where, who serves what and whether you have help in the house. Bunch of snobs. We were better off without them.


    My mom wasn’t better off in the technical sense, because she insisted on staying in that house. Must have been worth a half a mill ; more, with work done. Without me, no way she could have paid those bills. But I wasn’t handy, and I wasn’t making enough money. I was too thirsty for poontang.


    I do collection work and I enjoy it. You live on the phone. You find out things about people that are interesting to know, and yet you stay anonymous. Lots of secrets in this universe. First off, there’s no tiny subculture separate from the Real World because there is no Real World. Everyone’s got an act, and the only people who get to find out are the doctors and the lawyers and the guy who has to fix the corpse so Granny won’t be shocked and me. Who gets to see both sets of books.


    My mother was a limited person, even though it’s me that says it. She probably thought no woman getting three tasty nourishing meals a day would even be interested in sex. I do remember she had arguments with my father about it. There was time we went away for vacation to some shrine in Connecticut. We used to be very good Catholics until the pope instituted liberalities and he lost Mom. (Which turned out to be good for us because she stopped trying to make us go to church.) But now I’m wondering – if she had been more spiritual, would any of this have happened? Who knows?


    Anyway, when we got back from the shrine it was pretty obvious Dad had been “entertaining” while we were away. The woman must have been a smoker because her lipsticked butts were everywhere – but worse, there were condoms lying around like exploded balloons from a party we weren’t invited to. It was plain from my mother’s outraged screaming that he should be getting his sexing the back seats of automobiles like a normal person and bringing his floozies across her threshold was a sin so vile he would writhe in hell for eon upon eon. So I’m not likely to ask my mother’s opinion if a little snatch after work is OK. I had a pretty good idea what she would say.


    Then Mom got cancer, the basically curable kind that if you just spread your legs for a doctor occasionally you could totally avoid. But she wasn’t that “easy” so by the time they found out about it, sayonara.


    I had one night a week reserved for myself. Not too much to ask, right? I used to tell her I was going to the “club” – she wasn’t to know Rape of the Lock was a gay bar. They always had stuff — poetry readings, treasure hunts, mini-plays. Performances calculated to make the gals hot and horny, and a good time had by all. That’s where I met Klea – she was one of the bartenders there. She always claimed to be working towards an MBA but frankly I never saw any signs of it. She was stuck in a tense living situation too – living over a garage for free for a couple she was supposed to “caretake”.


    Blurry job description leads to lots of complaining. She wasn’t supposed to have any roommates – this couple was afraid that the outside world would find out they had a house loaded with QVC collectibles. What with Snoopster Mom Klea couldn’t visit me and the only way I could visit her was by sneaking. I climbed the trellis on occasion. Heavy drinking, heavy sex, heavy trellis climbing – romance killers when you’re looking forty in the face. Ask any actuary. We were primed for new life.
    For a short window of time there I was busy with my work and Klea, and Mom was busy with hospitals and ladies’ clubs and life was doable.

    Then there was another period where Mom was in the hospital and I could have Klea over. That was tense in some ways and better in other ways. It was better because it gave us an idea what it might be like to live together.


    We felt we were through the period where you try to make the other person jealous – just to prove you can – and we were talking about selling the house right after my mother died – “as is” condition, of course, but at least it was free and clear – and opening our own place. Not a bar – no trying to keep horns clipped — more of a café. We had both reached exactly the same time in our lives where we had to make up our minds: keep babysitting the straight world, or shape our futures the way we wanted them to be. We were dreaming.


    Klea worried Mom would “find out” and leave the house away from us. She kept nagging me to “come out” to this cancer-ridden lady. I told Klea she was being hysterical. The real problem was keeping Mom from finding out I was going to sell the place. If she’d been able to think in terms of progress and reward, her life wouldn’t have been such a shambles. Let me say right here that in her own way, Mom loved me and I loved her. If we loved “stylized” versions of each other – that’s family. So how do I explain what came after?


    My conclusion that a person’s ghost is that person’s worst self. When you die, the good part goes to heaven or whatever, and the bad part stays here to torment us. Get it? We’re hell. That guy who said, Hell is other people? Bingo. Hell is being at the mercy of a dead person that’s shed its conscience. We’re like nightmares dead people keep having. And they’re ours.


    The worst part was when the hospital sent my mother home to die. I think they were just trying to make things easier on themselves, but Mom was a willing participant. Home. That’s what she wanted. Hospice idea rejected right out of hand.
    So there I was with a nurse by day and a nurse by night. Hard on me, going without sex just when I needed it most. I had to have Klea back. I needed sex to relax, sex to get to sleep, sex to clear my head, sex to digest my food. You know how it is. Mom was confined to a hospital bed. So why couldn’t I get that support?


    I told Klea to only use the back stairs and never the front part of the second floor, where Mom was. But the noises she made! You could say Klea haunted Mom before Mom haunted Klea. Mom actually decided — because of Klea — that the house she’d lived in for forty- five years was haunted. My dead twin, Uncle Andrew – her own mother – people I’d never heard of like “Carla” and “Mrs. Myers” – I had to listen to hours of crazy ravings about everyone who’d ever nurtured a grudge against Mom. Who knew there was such a long list?


    They taught me to give her the morphine shots – made me practice with an orange – and I just kept upping the dose so she’d be out of it most of the time. Everybody does it. The nurses don’t mind so long as it isn’t them. Towards the end there’s a very fuzzy line between life and death and everyone understands that, but the law, apparently, still operates under the Old Testament scapegoat system. That’s all I can deduce.


    I was with her when she died. It was right between nurses,by coincidence, just at dusk. I had given her that last shot, and I was sitting there listening to her breathing go raspy. Definitely a death rattle – I had to leave the room. Then nothing. Hallelujah! I’d swear mom was relieved too. Now she was free. No need to Stepin Fetchit, I decided to wait for the nurse, who was late, by the way. So I called Klea down for a beer. Watching someone die is an unsettling experience, I can tell you. It’s Miller time.


    Klea wanders around in the nude by choice, but when the nurse is around she will make the concession of long shirt and jean-shorts. But her feet were bare. Halfway down the stairs she doubled up with pain and started screaming. Stepped on something. “Jesus!” she yelled. “I’ve been stabbed!”


    I sort of half carried her upstairs where I could lay her out on the bed. “It’s a hat pin,” I told her. “It’s really in there. I’m going to pull it out.”


    “No, no, no!” she screamed, grabbing my hand. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Promise you won’t touch
    it!”


    “Klea, stop being a baby about this. I can call the paramedics but when they come, you know what they’ll do? They’ll pull it out. Or we can wait for the nurse – to refuse to work on you — and who knows how long that will be? “


    “Please,” she whined, clutching me so desperately her face bones turned white and stuck out of the skin like a skull, just like Mom’s before she died – “Don’t do it yet! Give me some morphine!”
    I could hear myself explaining to the nurse why there was so much morphine missing with Klea zonked out upstairs. Recipe for trouble.


    “Relax. I’m going to pull it out real fast. It’ll be just like a bandaid. Don’t look at it.”

    But she held my hand. “So don’t give me a big dose. Just a little. You know they won’t miss it.”
    “Klea! Morphine to take a pin out of your foot! What an infant!”
    “You don’t know how it HURTS,” she wailed. “It hurts and I’m scared.”


    Well, it was in pretty far. Long hatpin. God I hoped her tetanus was up to date. What was it doing on the stairs anyway – in that position? Tell me how likely is that? My brain was scrambling.
    “Ok,” I said. “Be a pussy. Be a drug addict.”


    I tell you what decided me. I had a feeling this nurse wouldn’t do anything – she’d call the paramedics anyway. She was one of those people very worked up on only doing exactly what they’re paid for. I squirted plenty out because obviously she wouldn’t need as much. But since I got rid of it, how could I prove it? I shot the inside of her elbow, and it hit her pretty fast. You could see her blink off like a light. Went right to sleep, but her breathing was good.


    I hadn’t expected her to lose consciousness, but you better believe it helped me. Pliers got that thing out of there. I had the wound all dressed before the nurse arrived, so we could make the Mom calls together. Death certificate, doctor, funeral home. Then I got that Miller, long overdue.
    I had no idea Klea would be such a five year old. I’ve seen her handling drunks twice her size, which is nothing I’d line up for.

    She didn’t open her eyes till next morning.
    “So how’s my little junkie this morning?” I asked her. She was lying in bed – clothes askew, hair spilling everywhere – it would make the pope horny.


    “My foot’s sore,” she said. But she smiled. Looked like herself again. Pulled me on top of her. “So….” she whispered, “Is the place ours?” She probably shouldn’t have said that. “What’s for breakfast?”


    “I got a better idea than breakfast,” I said, rubbing her hard, flat stomach and trying to get my hand under her jeans, “How about deep, deep tissue massage? Guaranteed cure-all.“


    That’s when it happened. I was trying to unzip her jeans, wiggling that zipper up and down – and she started screaming again. Pushed me away, screamed I’d zipped her skin. When I realized what it was, I got the scissors and I cut the pants off her. But it was difficult because she was fighting hard the whole time. She was so upset she pissed on herself in the bed. God, it was like taking care of my mother all over again! And then to get blamed for everything. She was bleeding all right, but it was a tiny wound – just a little of the loose skin on her gut. It would grow back. It’s not my fault she wears her jeans so tight. Definitely no need for morphine here.


    “Here’s the culprit” I said, trying to show her the zipper with its played metal teeth.


    “YOU DID IT!” she hissed. “Don’t go blaming my zipper that never did that before! And it was your pin, too!”

    I was so taken aback I really didn’t know how to defend myself. “Hey, I fixed it,” I said.
    “You mean you fixed ME!” she said. “You sure did! I’m getting the fuck out of here before you slit my throat and offer to stitch it up for me!” And she shot out of bed and started pulling on sweatpants – my sweatpants.


    She was flying out the door before I had a chance to warn her about the stairs. I took up the rug and the stair rods so they could take out Mom and her hospital bed and I hadn’t replaced them yet. I mean, I get tired too. Mom waxed and waxed those goddamn stairs. My hair used to hold the smell for days. Klea would have been fine if she wasn’t going a hundred miles an hour. But I heard the thump, the slam – I swear I heard a crunch – and when I got to the bottom of the stairs, there was my second corpse in a two-day period.


    But I knew at that point that it was my mother who killed Klea — to keep us from living in her house! Of course! Bad anger, competitiveness, rage, resentment – they’re killers.


    Don’t you see I’m next? This way she gets us both. It looks so bad, what with the missing morphine, the extra morphine in Mom, the wounds on Klea, even her piss in my bed – and I can’t find a lawyer who will treat my story with respect!


    The way I see it is, it’s too late to apologize to a dead person. Too late to say the things I should have said — so she died and left pure rage behind. As a sort of default mode. What I need to know from you is, can a hant get a person convicted of murder? Because if that’s possible, we should all give up right now. Nobody’s safe.

  • Chainsaw Mermaid – 2

    II.

    Unfortunately, Ron was already pacing and angry when I got home. I guess it was an evening of firsts. I felt first guilt, then a cold, unpleasant wedge of fear across what was left of my gut. But in our game of emotional isometrics it wouldn’t do to show him. I had to force myself to act unconcerned as I strolled through the kitchen door.


    “You went out,” I said, tossing my purse to the chair. Missing, dammit. “So did I.”
    “You were out with some guy,” he sneered. “How could you think I wouldn’t find out?”
    Lucky guess or did Ron have spies? Here was something Bolio obviously hadn’t thought of. Me either, for that matter.


    “I don’t know his name,” I said, walking past him up the stairs. “He just happened to be there so I talked to him. You talk to people, I talk to people. I’m sure your spy told you we never touched each other.”

    He was following me up the stairs too closely. It was all I could do to keep from running. Showing fear would be fatal; I would lose my upper hand. I found myself thinking frantically about possible weapons, methods of escape. Slam my door shut and jump out the bedroom window?
    Now!”


    “I don’t believe you!” he barked. “Strip!


    Physical fear is a disgusting and unforgettably horrible experience. Ron was drunk, but not enough to help me out. His eyes glowed insanely. If I’d had a gun I would have rescued Bolio then and there. In all our time together I had seen Ron this mad plenty of times; just never at me. Because I never challenged him. How had I ever lived with this man? Kidded myself that I was free?
    I started undressing because I knew I had to or he would tear the clothes off me. What was he after? I could no longer read him. He pushed my garments aside and put his hands on my body – hard. “Where did you get those marks?”


    He pried my thighs apart. I tried to back away from him, almost tripping over the bed.


    “You made them yourself, this morning. Don’t you remember?” I bruise easily. Cost of doing business. “Twice.”


    He flipped me to my stomach. He had a lot of strength. “You’re lying. Who have you been with? What did you do?”


    Out of his back pocket he pulled the handcuffs and began to smack them menacingly against
    his palm. At the sight of them I began to shriek and babble. I’ve never liked confinement or restraint – this was not a game I cared to play. As I’d suspected, my fear only emboldened him. He handcuffed me right to the headboard. I couldn’t help showing fear, so I needed Plan B. Maybe if I just cooperated with everything I could calm him down. I wasn’t guilty after all, not of what he thought. He bent over sniffing me. Sniffing me like a dog.


    I kicked at him furiously. Big mistake. He stared at me as incredulous as if I’d aimed a punch. Then he started taking off his belt. I began screaming, but out on the country there was no one to hear. We were both out of control.


    “Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me! I’m leaving! I’m calling the police!” I said everything except, “I’ll kill you,” which was the only true thing. He was a dead man from that moment.
    He beat me, rhythmically, shouting, “Don’t -Ever-LieTo-Me-Again!”He said he only hit me six times – but I wasn’t counting. I floated away.


    I floated away because I hate being trapped. Closed my mind because, in spite of everything I’d ever thought, everything I’d ever felt, everything I’d ever done, my life came down to the fact that I was the sort of person to whom this happened. That was the truth about me.
    Was there blood? It hurt a lot. He said, “You brought it on yourself.”


    I could tell from his face that he was the scared one now. That meant there were marks. Now the police would lock him up for the night on just my say so. He knew that. He uncuffed me, asking solicitously,


    “Are you going to be good?”

    I pulled the comforter up over my head and snuggled down into a hot fetal nest, the way I used to when I was a little girl. Gone. I didn’t want the police. I planned for better than momentary satisfaction. I am a cultivator and my plans were flowering hugely.


    I heard him talking to himself, stomping around and muttering, something about putting a roof over my head, giving me gas money, being entitled to respect. Entitlement? On the “fairness planet,” he would be squashed at birth like the bug he was. It was up to me to squash him.


    “Well, I’m going on a rubber run,” he said. “Now that I can’t trust you any more.”
    I didn’t want him out in the world, babbling to sets of sympathetic ears about his horrible, ungrateful
    devastation of an evening. So I lowered the comforter. “Nothing happened,” I said. “I guarantee
    you. I swear to you. You’re the only one.”


    Was there something in him that was wishing I was lying, so the beating would be OK? Who cares? Try too hard to understand someone and you let them invade you. I had to play through. My conciliatory attitude inflated his confidence.


    “Well, next time I won’t just beat your pretty ass,” he said in a big voice for the trees to hear. “I’ll
    toss you out.”I reached for him. Hardest thing I ever did.

    I proved it.
    Next day I was very sore. I woke up first as I always did, stepping out of bed over the pants I’d sucked off him. I made coffee, brought him a cup. As he drank, he looked me over with a fond smile.


    “Let me see your tail.”


    I turned. He pleated my buttocks with his hands, petting his handiwork. “Nothing. It’ll be gone in a
    week.”


    He found me sitting out in the garden with a glass of wine. No comment on how early it was to be hitting the bottle.


    “I’m going to PepBoys. Need anything?”


    What the hell would I be needing at Pep Boys? Thank God for dark glasses. I didn’t trust myself to
    answer. dinner?”


    He persisted. “Got everything you need for Cyanide? Rat poison?“Sure,” I managed.“Enough wine?”


    He was teasing now. He liked that I was hitting the bottle. Not so superior now, was I? He could see I’d turned some sort of corner, but he couldn’t tell where that left him.
    heard.”
    “Liquor stores aren’t open on Sundays, so I He rattled his keys. “I’ve got connections.”

    “Sure then.” Let him be seen buying illegal booze all over town. “St. Emilion.” There’s a touch of my old self. “Nothing later than ’94.” Blowing smoke, but he wouldn’t know. He never knew.
    He drawled, “Right.”Then he was gone. Free! I went straight to
    the phone and hit 2 on the speed dial.


    Would Bolio be in the office on a Sunday, cooking the books, trying to make sense out of his own addicted senselessness? And if so, would he answer? He did, on the second ring.
    possible.”


    “I want him dead,” I said. “As soon as “What happened? What’s up?” He kindled
    at my change in tone.“He beat me up last night. First time.”


    “Could be a problem. Is it visible?”“It could be a problem! Hell, it’s more than
    a problem. I almost killed him myself.”“We don’t want you to have too obvious a
    motive, that’s all.”“No. Not visible.”


    “Well, what happened?”


    “Someone saw us together, you and me. But they didn’t seem to know who you were.”

    “We might be able to carry it off tonight. Make sure the liquor flows. Stay away from the stuff yourself. Right before bed, take him out to the garden to look at the moon, or whatever. I’ll do the rest.”


    I prepared steaks the way Ron liked them, rubbing them with garlic and mustard, pounding them thin. While I worked, my mind wouldn’t stop whirling. Back when I was having chemotherapy, they threw a therapist at me. She made much of the fact that I’d lost my dad at age 5. Lays you open to subsequent depression, she said. Making it sound like that caused the cancer.

    Death, she said, would be “processed” by my five year old self as rejection. “Narcissistic injury”. When I told her I didn’t believe in wasting time in depression, she made one of those “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” modern therapy comments; said, “Maybe you don’t allow yourself to feel it.” That remark has bugged me all my life. If I was going to start getting even, that dame would be on my list. Blaming my poor dead dad for cancer. Telling me she knows my feelings better than I do.


    If I had ever been depressed I was no longer. Instead, I was galvanized, pulsating with excitement in every cell. Call it “The murder cure”. I laughed out loud as I imagined myself writing a book, becoming famous, touring the talk shows. “Sometimes You Just Have to Kill ‘Em.”

    “Well, Geraldo, all I can say is it worked for me.”
    I set the table with my best linen, china and silver, things used only once or twice a year. Ron would be impressed. He never knew they weren’t my antiques. I had always tried to convey the impression I was wellborn, a mysterious wealthy family somewhere off in the mist. Of course I’d bought all the things myself. Presents to myself.


    If I am the one who gives them their meaning, I might as well give them their existence. That’s the way I look at it, whatever people say. The only thing I really want is that chainsaw mermaid. Everything else is a substitute. If while looking for her I found a wonderful piece of china or silver instead, it was like a gift from my dad.


    I actually tried telling that damned therapist about my chainsaw mermaid, and how much she meant to me, about how I lay in bed imagining her looking at me from the woods, peering through the trees, and it gave me such a sense of reassurance. I felt so safe. But the stupid therapist said, “Why does she feel she can’t come inside?”


    Because she’s a garden sculpture, you idiot! That’s what I wanted to say. Instead I clammed up, because I was too sick. But the real question is, why didn’t I go out into the woods to join her? I couldn’t go, because I was only five years old, but I was not five years old any more. The woods were beckoning, dark and deep. Boiling with life and possibility.


    Ron was late coming home, and when he did, it was obvious he’d been boozing. When he saw my slinky black dress, heels and makeup and the ornamental table, he thought just what I wanted him to think, which was that I was trying to make up to him. Apologizing for upsetting him so much he had to hit me. Big You, Little Me.


    He pinned me up against the kitchen wall and gave me a tongue bath. I wondered how many bars he’d visited. All of them, I hoped.

    “Got you something,” he told me, after he’d scored my thong as a trophy. “Come and look.”
    My trophy was a fairly new looking, bright blue Pontiac GrandAm. I knew him too well to even imagine he had put it in my name. It was just about the most repulsive thing, outside of Ron himself, that I’d ever seen. Don’t care for “push” presents.


    “Only thirty thousand miles on it”, he bragged. “Sure beats that ancient Beamer of yours.”
    In Ron’s world, everything “beats” something. I guess it’s beat or be beaten. You bought your own coffin, Ron, I thought. I had a hard job convincing him not to take us out for a spin. Told him you can’t keep red meat waiting!


    For his last meal I fed him all his favorite food. Ranch dressing on his salad, cheese poured all over his vegetables – restraint was gone for good. He didn’t offer St Emilion – lowballed me with California Riesling instead – but I was only pretending to drink so it didn’t matter. Ron, who considers wine an affectation, swilled several bottles of Magic Hat.


    Was I going overboard? Was he too drunk to realize I wanted him to explode? But he accepted it quite unironically in tribute to his kingliness. He even finished my dinner.


    “You go sit in front of the TV,” I said. “I’ll clean this up.”Should I make coffee? I didn’t want to sober him up one iota, but I needed the stuff myself. Hell, I could throw brandy in his.

    As I was carrying plates out through the pantry I was annoyed to discover the light was off. I know I’d left it on. Must have been the bulb.


    But then Bolio detached himself from the darkness and stepped into my path.
    “Having fun yet?” he asked, touching my neck. Left hand-right hand. Tried to kiss me.


    I smelled scotch, cigar and sweat. He wore a suit but no tie, and his shirt was partially unbuttoned. I was angry that he had broken with our plan and let his gambler out and enraged that he’d been drinking, but I couldn’t do much with all those plates in my hand. I tried to push around him, but his hands grabbed my shoulders.


    The light went on. It was Ron, screwing in the bulb and gaping at us, too stupefied to speak. He shook his head as if to clear hallucinations.


    Bolio lunged for him, grabbed his head and smashed it into the glass cabinet. Glass shattered everywhere, spraying out into the room in fine particles. I dodged away from them into the kitchen. They clutched each other and went down on the floor, rolling back and forth in the tiny space.
    Ron had the upper hand of knowing the room. He grabbed a drawer, pulling the contents down on himself. Uh, oh. Knives. He was on top – it looked to me as if Bolio was losing. His cell phone skittered across the floor.


    But it was Ron who lost when I slapped the brandy bottle against his head. It didn’t break, but he went down and stayed down.

    “Thanks,” said Bolio.
    I wanted to shriek at him for betraying our plan. But I never cuss when I can get even. “He dead?” I
    asked instead.“Not hardly. Better tie him up, he could
    come to at any moment.”


    “How are we going to explain this mess?” We were out of the plan and floating free.
    “We’ll take the crime scene elsewhere. Clean it up. Tell anyone who’s interested he was going to replace the cabinet fronts. We’ll break the window on that new car of his and hope they can’t tell one kind of glass from another. Got any bungee cords?”
    I went to get them.


    “And a couple cans of whatever he was drinking. Full.”
    Ron up.


    “Bottles.” I produced them as he trussed “I suppose that will do. Ready to roll.”“I’ll get my coat.”“You won’t need it.”


    “Will too.” I certainly didn’t tell him why. My coat pockets have gloves.


    “Nice new car,” said Bolio as he bundled Ron into the front seat of the Pontiac. I followed them in Bolio’s diesel Mercedes. At the railroad crossing Bolio propped Ron up in the driver’s seat and began removing the bungee cords.


    Ron was coming to, moaning. I came slowly up behind Bolio and from my pocket whipped out the handcuffs, cuffing both him and Ron to the steering wheel. I counted on a moment of drunken, frozen amazement to be able to steal the car key and I got it. I threw it across the tracks.
    Bolio couldn’t puzzle it out. With all his best efforts, best intentions, the house kept winning.
    “What’s this?” he demanded drunkly. “No time for this, babe.”


    “I’m not your babe,” was all I said. See? Save your breath for the important stuff. It was already almost midnight, so I got in his car and drove away.


    I would have liked to stay and tell him I’d figured out who reported seeing me with a man to Ron, but I could already hear the train. Maybe Bolio salted the earth a bit, never wasting an opportunity to point out to Ron how little I gave for what I got.


    Bolio was banging on the hood and screaming so loudly I was afraid he’d rip out the steeping wheel. But he hadn’t managed to do it by the time the train blew through.


    As soon as I got home I called the police. My husband and his lawyer had a terrible fight. Something about money. When it turned physical and they started smashing things, I ran upstairs. Then they drove away in Ron’s car. Since they were drunk as well as angry, I was scared, so I took the lawyer’s car and tried to follow them but I couldn’t find them. I was afraid something awful was going to happen.


    The police were extremely uninterested in things that were about to happen. No emergency that they could see. So instead of cleaning up I took a nice hot bubble bath, with music and candles. I was still in the bath when I got the call about the train crossing.


    Bolio was right. There was a lot of money. But I was most surprised to get a check from the Client Security Fund, some special fund that compensates people for thieving lawyers. The attorney who brought me the check was such a nice young man. He explained with great seriousness how apologetic the Bar Association was, but in a whole barrel of apples one or two are often bad, and poor Mr. Bolio was infected with the disease of gambling. Maybe they’ll find a cure someday, said the nice young man handing me the check.


    Actually he was infected with the disease of losing, I thought, but I certainly didn’t say so. And they’ll never find a cure for that.

  • Chainsaw Mermaid


    1

    Seems criminal that a person has to wait thirty-nine years to acquire a garden, but that’s what happened to me.


    My father was a sculptor — a master of transformations. His day job was arborist so his tool was a chainsaw. He made many fantastical creatures to populate our wild garden — dragons, demons, griffons. My mother believed too much in personal freedom even to weed – thus giving my father’s creations their perfect background. When my dad asked me what I wanted him to make for me I said, “Mermaid” – the Little Mermaid being all the rage that year. So she was born – a chainsaw mermaid to watch over me through the sumac saplings. Then my father died and life assumed a different mien.


    Turns out there is no freedom without money – a brutal fact with which my mother seemed unprepared to cope. When the process servers came, the things I’d always known were sold piecemeal.


    I’ve haunted junk shops and garden stores ever since, certain I would someday find something of his again, and when I did not, well, it only proves how unwilling anyone would be to part with such masterpieces. But everyone has to die eventually, right? Someday I would find them. And!the right garden to put them in.


    Ron never wanted to be a homeowner, just like he’s never wanted to get married. “Steps to the grave” is what he calls such behavior. He’s more concerned about
    premature burial than Poe ever was. But he’s been so successful in the construction business that finally his lawyer made him see reason, by actually accusing him of throwing money away. That lawyer is the only person I’ve ever heard of who can make Ron do anything. His technique? Numbers.! Show Ron the numbers, and prove to him he’s wasting money.


    If numbers aren’t my thing, neither is begging or cajoling. The really worthwhile things in life are without numerical expression. If a person can’t figure that out for themselves then God help them, I say.!! Ron already has a sneaking suspicion my brain is better than the one he’s got and he wastes too much time trying to convince himself of the opposite. It’s a sore spot – one he irritates himself.
    I was less than thrilled about moving, after finally getting the garden at the rental place just the way I like it. I could hardly imagine that Ron, acting alone (or even with his lawyer) could come up with a house acceptable to me.! Partly because Ron is!the King of Deals – he won’t buy anything unless the price is an absolute steal.!What else can you expect from a man who chains his wallet to his pants? So I took it for granted the place he bought was a dump. Rental agents have legal standards they’re required to maintain, but you can slap a “for sale” sticker on anything. Since Ron’s expertise is construction,! he’s not bothered by little details like missing roofs or bathrooms. He likes to pee outside anyway.


    I’m happy to say I was very surprised. Yes the house – and garage – were a dump and going to be an eternity of work – but that garden! Or “yard” as Ron calls it. Huge! Gorgeous! So overgrown – very reminiscent of the garden of my childhood. Haunted by the ghosts of perennials – hollyhocks and roses and dahlias and poppies– poking up through the weeds. Shadows of espaliered pears and pollarded crabapples. So much room! I was dazzled. I was in love. It was big enough for a water course – a koi pond or even a waterfall. A garden you could get lost !in. Delicious challenge!


    I was unwise enough to let Ron see my rapture. Afterwards I heard him on the phone with his lawyer worrying about what constitutes common law marriage. Would I get some kind of legal hold over him by sharing his legal residence?! (He didn’t know I was listening, natch.) His lawyer reassured him that we don’t live in a common-law marriage state and Ron was all relieved. The property was in foreclosure – too good a deal to allow to slip away.! Some other guy’s grief was Ron’s tax break, because the garage was big enough to store business equipment and there was room enough for a home office. So after offer and counteroffer, scaring me half to death, he bought the place.


    Don’t ask me what Ron’s problem is. I’ve got too strong a gag reflex to study anyone’s psyche closely. All I can say is Ron appears to operate on the basic theory that women are always trying to force men to do things they don’t want to do and the only manly stance is Resistance. In our relationship, I’m cast as the Nazis and he’s the French Underground. Emotional isometrics.!
    At the beginning of our relationship he used to try to get me to take any position, just so he could pick the opposite side. If I switched, he switched. I’m too wily for that now.!I don’t care about marriage. I was married before and it was sufficiently unpleasant that I wouldn’t care to go through anything like it again. The short version is, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and my husband bailed. He was the type who has to be having sex every minute and if you’re under the weather, he’s out the door. And no kids? Dealbreaker.


    I! beat the cancer – I’m a survivor. Forget marriage. I’ve explained all this to Ron this over and over, but Ron thinks women automatically lie about everything. At the start of our relationship it was condoms, condoms, condoms. He’s a double bagger — he just wouldn’t take my word for anything.
    “That’s what they all say,” was his wittiest retort. We must have had sex 180 times before there came that one time when he “wasn’t prepared.” Of course that makes them want it even worse.!I said,“Don’t worry,! baby, I took care of it.”


    Bit of a euphemism for massive organ removal, wouldn’t you say? But things improved from that day forward.!!As a cultivator, bound by the cycles of the seasons, I cultivate patience. I care about potential, about becoming. One thing I learned from my mother is, don’t waste energy. Allow nature to take its course. I respected Ron enough to allow him to take his course; he would love me or not, as he needed to; we would stay together or not. Whatever.


    We’d been together five months – approaching the Critical Half Year – when I got The Speech. He had to wire himself up with a few beers first so I could see something big was coming. He told me he was never getting married and he never wanted children, and I could live under his roof and cook his food and tease his penis but that was it.


    I probably gave him the shock of his life by telling him it was fine with me. Whew! I was afraid he was going to tell me to get a job but as long as he pays the bills
    and lets me do what I want I consider myself lucky. I’ve got too many plans of my own to sign my time over to someone else.


    So I gave Ron my speech. I said that since the condom’s disappearance I had assumed we were a monogamous pair, but if he ever wanted to partake of foreign delights, I would appreciate its reappearance. I wouldn’t say a word of criticism – he was as free as a bird. But I’d be grateful for protective impulses. I’ll share, but I don’t gamble with my health. He said “OK.”
    Although I considered we had an ironclad agreement I couldn’t resist being a bit curious about him. I wasn’t surprised to discover that his most potent fantasy is being handcuffed to a bed. “Control freaks!”


    Careful not to wear her out I saved Dungeon Mistress for our “special” nights. His other fetish seemed to be taking nude pix of me – I have a great body and I don’t mind showing it off – but I draw the line at action fare. And I was gratified to see the condom never again reared its ugly head.
    In a relationship like ours, “Love” is a forbidden word. You don’t want to hear Ron on the subject of love – it’s his least attractive side. He totally buys into the self-interest explanation of why people do things. “Love” doesn’t exist – it’s just dressed-up lust, a social lie people tell to make themselves feel better, yada yada yada.


    He’s “freed” himself from all that. I did feel sometimes like I was having sex with a fifteen year old – he’s not that much younger than me – but if he’s immature, he has other qualities. I learned not to scare him with the things he can’t understand. It just messes with his hard-ons.


    I’m the Queen of Deals myself — I haunt consignment and thrift stores. It’s amazing the treasures you can find. That night I wore my red silk Halston with the long skirt – slit right up to here – and no blouse beneath the jacket.! It doesn’t need a blouse unless I lean way forward, which I wasn’t planning to do. I put on long dangly jet earrings and all my rings.


    I enjoy being alone in restaurants — I insist on one set place so everyone can see I’m not expecting company. I love the whispering, the speculation; whatever they guess about me is wrong. I even enjoy the occasional attempted pickup, but so far I haven’t been tempted to accept.
    Ron keeps his weirdnesses well hidden – he’s a handsome man with a gorgeous body – and he knows what I like in bed — so he’s actually made my standards higher. If he’s intellectually lacking, well, a game of intellectual chess usually results in boudoir disappointment, I find.
    So who could seduce me? Perhaps a man the exact opposite of Ron – wearing, say, a Tom Ford suit with art deco cufflinks; blond, foreign, cosmopolitan.! None of those hanging around our corner of the world.! Not so far.


    I’d been busy with the move and I hadn’t had the opportunity to study the “fine dining” pages and pick a place to patronize, as is my usual amusement. Plus, now that we lived in the country I really didn’t want to go all the way to town. The Smithy was the furthest outpost I could think of where the food was impressive, the ambiance acceptable and the decibels dulled so I steered the BMW there.
    At the entrance to the restaurant I was hurrying from the parking lot as fast as possible in stilettos when I bumped into somebody.! Come to think of it, he bumped into me.
    “Renata,” he said. “Right?”


    “I don’t know you.” I halted abruptly. This was not my dream man, but he was wearing a suit. He was about my height with a receding hairline and long, messy salt and pepper hair. An unkempt moustache. Looked a bit like the manager of a rock group or somebody of that sort.


    “Oh yes you do, Renata. You know me quite well. It’s true we’ve only talked on the phone, but we have so much in common. I’d like to buy you dinner tonight.”
    Hmmmm. Nothing familiar about those bloodhound cheeks, those sad, sad eyes. But he was right. The voice I recognized.


    “Brad Bolio,” I said. “You’re Ron’s lawyer.”
    “Right.”! We were standing in the doorway blocking traffic. He took my elbow and steered me inside.


    “How did you know I was coming here?” I asked. “I didn’t even know myself till about twenty
    minutes ago.”

    “I followed you. I’ve been following you for days.”


    Questioning my memory, I hadn’t noticed him – I hadn’t noticed anybody. But thirty-nine-year-olds don’t expect stalkers. !So I allowed myself to be led to a table. I noticed he chose the darkest corner.


    I ordered the grilled salmon; he selected the lobster ravioli and a bottle of St.Emilion. A vintage that can lead you astray.


    With the long habit of saying the exact opposite of what I’m really thinking, I said, “It’s kind of flattering to be followed. What did it tell you about me?”
    “That you’re a deal taker and a risktaker. I already knew you were clever and cultured. Ron brags
    about you. “


    Jawdropper. I had to struggle not to react. Ron, bragging to others about the very things he criticizes in me?! Be still my heart!


    “I assume you know he has nude pictures of you on his phone and he shows them to everyone. Waitresses, cops, flagmen. People he’s just met. They’re his calling card.”


    This info was less welcome. If he was trying to get a reaction out of me, he’d scored. My one hope was in all this darkness he couldn’t tell how dark I’d reddened.
    Brad Bolio eyed me glitteringly.


    “I ask myself why the hell do you put up with him?” He answered his own question. “I’m guessing you’re addicted. Addicted to comfort.”
    The wine was delicious. I pushed away the forgettable food to concentrate on its dark delight.


    “You’ve got me,” I said. “I’m a lazy risktaker.” I always think of my father when I drink. Why? He used to get down on his knees to speak to me. No man has done it since.
    “Unfortunately,” Bolio was saying, “I’m a risk-taker too. And the house keeps winning.”
    A gambler! Poor bastard.


    “I’ll bet you have a system,” I said.! I’m not a dumb risk taker. I would never bet against the house. The odds are deliberately stacked in favor of the house and everyone knows this. The key is to be the house.


    “Let me show you something.”! He produced a black eelskin document case from his breast pocket and removed a folded square. He wore three big rings – Catholic high school, college and law school rings, judging by appearance. They’re usually the gaudiest. His precise movements didn’t match that big lazy body, so I psychoanalyzed him for amusement. I can smell “internal conflict”. I visualized the gambler in fisticuffs with the attorney, picturing each in a variety of hats. Cowboy? Coonskin? Maybe a Cardinal’s hat to go with those ostentatious rings. He produced a cigarette lighter – gaudy and bejewelled – and lit it so that I could read the paper.


    It was a marriage certificate, made out for Ron Valerio and me. Ron’s side was signed; a line awaited my signature. Somehow, in the midst of packing and unpacking the UHaul, it seemed we had found the time to go to Vegas.


    “Who are these witnesses?” I demanded. “They’re going to know it wasn’t us.”


    “They’re professional witnesses,” said Bolio. “A Franklin is the only face they recognize.”
    “It really looks like his signature,” I teased. “Must be one of his surprises. I wonder when was he going to tell me?”


    “It ain’t real, sweetheart, but the minute you sign it, it’s legal,” and Bolio stretched it helpfully out on the table and offered me a pen. “What Ron doesn’t know won’t hurt him. There’s a will, too. I’m a Renaissance man with many gifts – I’ve been signing Ron’s name for years. Sign here so you will no longer live in sin.! Then everybody’s happy.”


    Maybe after a day of hard work, on an empty stomach and three glasses of wine, I was as high as a kite, because I signed. But I still wasn’t getting it. I was certain Ron knew all about this. It was some kind of underhanded legal maneuver – like, we’re married if it suits Ron financially, and not when it doesn’t. That touchstone. A marriage of convenience. I tolerate ambiguity less well when drunk.
    challenged.


    “Did Ron ask you to come here?”
    Bolio summoned the waitress and addressed her flirtatiously from beneath his lashes. “This lady is cut off,” he said. “Get her a double espresso.”


    “Hey, I signed,” I said. “So how come I don’t get another bottle of wine?! You could always drive
    me home.”


    Bolio sighed. “Because I have something very serious to discuss with you and you need your wits about you. And no, Ron definitely doesn’t know I’m here.”


    The waitress delivered my espresso with a smirk. I felt like giving her the finger. I was starting to feel rebellious but also antsy. Ron wouldn’t like me doing things behind his back – had I just done something stupid? Messed up my future? But if Ron’s signature was forged, couldn’t I claim mine was forged too? But would I get away with it?


    Bolio poured cream so carefully over a spoon it floated on the surface of his coffee. Flashy dude.
    “Ron is very, very rich,” he said. “And he maintains a huge position in undeclared cash. But not as much as he thinks he’s got because when I was in a jam I helped myself to some of it.”
    “And now you can’t pay it back.” I guess the party was over. Regrettably the espresso was working.! Time to smarten up.


    “I’d rather not pay it back,” said Ron’s attorney. “I’d rather kill Ron actually, but for that I need
    your help.”


    “Why on earth do you want to kill Ron?”
    That got a reaction out of me.
    “Doesn’t everyone? Don’t you? Isn’t he the most irritating bastard you’ve ever met? He won’t marry you and he doesn’t love you. He says emotional involvement is for suckers. You got nothing, lady. I expected you to be smarter, actually. After you’ve worn your pretty fingers to the unattractive bone fixing up his brand new house, what’s to keep him from kicking you out and moving in a younger cutie?”


    Of course that had always been a possibility. I simply enjoyed believing Ron couldn’t find anyone as wonderful as Wonderful Me. But Wonderful Me was definitely getting older and missing most of her insides. What if he got some cootchie pregnant? Ron wouldn’t be the first man to decide in his fifties that what he really wanted was a family. I had a sinking feeling Bolio knew plenty of things I didn’t know. But I was hinky. There was still that possibility of a setup.
    “Are you recording this?” I demanded.


    “Why would I? I’d have to be crazy – since I’m doing all the talking, and you’re doing all the listening, right? So listen a little. I need an heir I can trust. You can’t lose! – it’s all gain.! He’ll leave a huge estate. There’s even insurance. We split fifty-fifty and you clear a cool mill after taxes. Did you know he paid cash for that house? Can you imagine such a thing in this day and age? The house would be yours. The cars would be yours. There’s no family around to spike your play. The partners will almost certainly offer to buy you out of the business. I could negotiate that for you. You don’t want to get ripped off.”


    I knew better than to show the rage I was beginning to feel but my remarks were fairly cutting. “And we’ve established how trustworthy you are. My affairs would be so safe in your hands.”
    He was game; a game advocate. And so he advocated. “Look at it this way. We’d each be contributors to the body of the crime, so if we tell on each other we’d be telling on ourselves. My assessment of you is you’re too smart. You enjoy the finer things of life but spend all your time at flea markets. Here I am offering a free upgrade. Want to spend a lifetime in jail? Neither do I. I’m his executor, I’ll see his estate through probate, then we’ll say sayonara. I’m even willing to do all the wet work. The way I see it, all you’ve got right now, is Ron, and if you knew Ron as well as I know him, you’d realize that’s less than nothing.”


    Before meeting Ron I was in sales, so I recognized this technique. Give the sucker two choices – yours and something horrible. Don’t let them think about what could go wrong. This is the same way he probably manipulates Ron.


    “Don’t assume-“ I hissed with a little too much heat but he held up his hand.


    “I’m not assuming anything. I’m asking. You can certainly refuse and that’s the end of it. I wouldn’t dare kill him if you say no, so his life is in your hands. I’ll pay the money back and look for other opportunities.” He shook the eelskin document. “Here’s your bonus for even talking to me about it. Goes in the safe and mum’s the word – only gets found if it needs to get found. All I ask is you sleep on what I’ve said for a week. One week. OK?”


    He leaned over the table, gripping my hand in both his. A musky, heated smell of desire poured off him. He said troatily, “You’re settling for way too little, lady.”


    Finally a come on! I pulled back and loosed my hand. Cocked a brow.
    “Is there a Mrs. Bolio?”


    He threw down his napkin. “There’s a
    question I didn’t expect.! Should I be flattered?”


    I guessed clever Mr. Bolio was still a secret to himself. “You know all about me. Tell me all about you.” I liked seeing him nervous. Unsettled. He rattled his rings against his coffee cup.


    “There are no co-conspirators, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “That’s not what I’m asking.”


    “There are three Mrs. Bolios. All of them are too expensive. However, they are not in the picture at
    present.”


    “Got a girlfriend?”


    “All my exes live in Texas,” I hummed. He shook his head. “Can’t dignify her with the title.

    “So here’s my final question. Wives or girlfriends –who do you treat better?”


    His mouth worked his moustache nervously. He realized he was auditioning and he didn’t
    like it.


    “I’ll agree with Ron about one thing. Marriage is best avoided,” he said shortly. “My advice to you is pass through engagement and head straight for widowhood. You’re going to be a very wealthy widow. I recommend it as the best of all possible worlds.”


    Of course it didn’t answer my question. But it only raised my suspicion that the truth about Mr. Bolio was that his right hand and his left hand had never even met. When I drank the last cold little bit of espresso, I was sorry to see it go.


    “Do you know how you’ll do it?! Have you gotten that far?”


    Now he was on surer ground. “He makes it pretty damned easy by driving drunk every Saturday night. It’s not a question of how.! It’s a question of when. I favor jamming a beercan under his pedals and stranding him unconscious across the train tracks with the midnight Acela coming through. There’s a bad crossing the town fathers have been dithering about fixing for years. Three deaths there already. Simple but effective.”


    Sounded functional. As the suicide hot line counselors say, his method was sufficiently lethal.! I rose abruptly.


    “OK. I listened.”


    “You’ve got one week,” he reminded me.
    “Call me. I’m number two on your speed dial.”
    That was also true. Over my shoulder I saw him paying for our dinner in cash. Ron’s cash, presumably.

    To be Continued…

  • Please Stop Calling Me Patsy


    This is not an easy tale to tell, Officer, but if you pay attention, I guarantee you’ll understand. I realize I should have known better than to let a guy pick me up in a bar. Tears after bedtime – sometimes even before. But what are bars for? And he had such an original line. And he himself was an original. Moments like that keep a girl getting up in the morning. I know what with your work you’re probably jaded. But let me assure you, lots of us still seek a “gloves off” experience.
    Without that narrow skull he would have been soap-opera handsome. His profile was perfect, but when he faced you head on, you couldn’t help feeling something was missing. And his haircut was strange – very curly at the top and nothing at the sides. Yet he was dressed like he came from money. I found it fun imagining him with long curly locks and a point-lace collar. Little
    Lord Foppington.


    And then, as I said before, he packed such a refreshingly different line!


    “I’d like to take you home to meet my grandmother,” he told me. I mean, come on! How often does a girl hear that sort of thing in a bar? Never even asked who I was. Never showed the slightest interest in my name. In a bandage dress and gladiator heels you wouldn’t have taken me for a Granny’s girl.

    “Would you now?” I teased. “And why’s that?”shuddered as he glanced around at my competition.


    “You look just like Patsy,” he said. He “These other girls are wearing – underwear for clothes.”
    That’s the fashion. Straight from work, they’d probably eagerly removed their suit jackets to show off their toned arms and their barely-there camisoles. I know I would, if I worked an office. Call it “Lewd Friday”.


    He continued, “I dine with Gran once a month and she always insists that I bring Patsy. You don’t mind if she calls you Patsy, do you?”


    “I’m not sure.” As I said before, this was totally new. Truth to tell I was a little tired of my life.

    Anonymity, incongruity — the chance to play at being someone else did appeal in some strange kind of way. Still, a girl owes it to herself to check for lust murderers and anyone recently released from any kind of institution.


    “So what happened to Patsy?”


    He shook his head. “There is no Patsy. Let’s say Patsy is more of an ideal than a person.”


    A compliment? Maybe. Never been called an ideal and asked to meet the granny in my whole life before, and I’ve been around the track. Sometimes I was the greyhound, sometimes the electric bunny. He paid my bar tab and his, taking it for granted that I’d agreed to go. Point number two in his favor: nobody pays for anybody anymore. But I remained somewhat leery as we exited into the parking lot, aware that at the last moment I could always break into a run. Let’s say I’ve learned to run in heels.


    “Is it far away? Don’t tell me it’s in Pennsylvania someplace.”
    “Oh no,” he said. “It’s only two exits up.”


    He drove a pretty old Alpha, lemon yellow with wood grain and leather interior. Nicely taken care of. Quite a distinctive car. Point number three. It decided me. Everyone knows serial killers drive muscle cars. American.


    Still, I jumped at the chance to inspect the trunk when he offered. Can’t be too careful.
    “Would you like a blanket? I have one in the boot. The heater’s a bit iffy.”


    The trunk contained dark brown luggage and a gift basket. No crowbar, no rifle, no chainsaw, not even a tire iron that I could see. Point four. Nick extracted a plaid blanket and tucked it over me as I crawled somewhat uncomfortably into the front bucket seat. In case I ever needed to, plan B was; throw the blanket over his head and grab for the keys. Tight squash even for two people.
    I said, “You didn’t mention your name.”


    “I’m Nick,” he said. “Nick Quilliver.” He acted as if I might recognize it. I didn’t.


    Subtle to the end, I “jostled” the glove compartment till it fell open. Contained only maps. No knives, handguns, or tasers. Point five in Nicky’s favor. Of course God knew what he had in his luggage but whatever it was, he couldn’t get to it very fast.

    “You have to bang on that thing,” he said, giving it the full fist. He wore a pinky ring on his right hand. Ancient signety-looking thing. Point for or point against? Too late. We were off. But since he’d paid my bar tab at least I had mad money. I’ve made it a point to pay in cash ever since I discovered that if you use a credit card they find it all too easy to track you down. You know. Stalkers. Call it the price of beauty.


    It was a difficult car to have a conversation in since it rattled like a soapbox derby with the wheels coming off. But as one used to conversing in bars, I gave it my best shot.


    “So Patsy is blonde?” I shouted.


    “Patsy has long, old fashioned hair. That’s what Grandmother likes.”


    I didn’t tell him the hair was no more real than Patsy was. Still, it was comforting to know I had the option of changing my appearance substantially, if this whole project went smash.


    “Grandmother likes, or Nicky likes?” “My name’s not “Nicky”, he snapped. “And my name’s not Patsy.”

    But he didn’t ask me what it really was.


    Two exits bullshit; we went all the way to Queen of Prussia. First lie. I paid close attention to directions in case I had to guide a cab driver, so I gave up on conversation.

    I was demanding a big house at this point and I wasn’t disappointed. Dd you see it? Pretty impressive; a stone mansion at the top of a hill, blazing with lights. You enter the drive between a pair of gender- bender lions that could have been in better shape. Or were they hyenas? I’ve heard hyenas can change sex when they feel like it. Just to spice things up.


    Nicky drove around to the back, where the shape of the house was concealed by masses of ivy. There was an old-fashioned half-timbered carriage house but Nicky parked right outside the back door and threw his keys beneath the seat. He fetched the gift basket and we entered into a narrow cloakroom where piles of broken crockery stood in baskets right beside the door, and an assortment of Homer Winslow outerwear hung to the left. As soon as we stepped into the light of the kitchen a tiny woman rushed forward in a blast of scotch.


    Nick’s grandmother was short, with iron- gray hair pulled back in a bun. She wore mannish black- rimmed glasses with very thick lenses behind which her eyes seemed to float like anxious fish in an unfamiliar aquarium. She was attired in a neat lace blouse and a gray skirt appropriate for fifty years ago. The effect was somewhat ruined by casually applied vivid red lipstick and huge chunky glass dime-store earrings that couldn’t have been real. They couldn’t have been.


    Makeup, palette knife, bottle of Johnnie Walker, it’s a bad combination, I was thinking as she enclosed me in her surprisingly muscular arms. You have to be careful not to get any of it on you.


    “Patsy! I’m so glad to see you. Have you been watching the war?”

    “Which war?” I felt disoriented. Gran cocked her head to look at me in tense disappointment. “The War. We. Are. Having.”


    “I don’t watch the news. It’s too upsetting.” Really I just don’t have the time. I hadn’t been coached but it seemed I’d said the right thing, because she nodded excitedly.


    “I know you’re busy with the Online. But you must have heard this – the president is an alien.”
    Poor president! I pictured him trying to cover up his reptilian feelers at press conferences. I glanced at my date but Nicky extruded no vibes.


    “I never go online,” I hazarded. I mean, she was an old lady. Chat Roulette would probably kill her. “I prefer the papers.”


    Her face broke into a delighted grin. “Bless you, Patsy!” Were those tears in her eyes? It had seemed a safe enough guess; over her shoulder I saw the kitchen table strewn with newspapers, and now that she bustled away with our coats, I got the chance to see they were super-mart tabloids. Explaining the “alien” comment.


    We were in a kitchen so old-timey it should have been a museum. Metal counters, very tired green linoleum, green metal cabinets, and an iron range. At the table sat an ancient black woman who did not acknowledge our presence. She was carefully cutting articles out of the newspapers.


    “Don’t bother with the coats, Edna,” shouted Mrs. Quilliver. “I’ve taken care of those. You make yourself busy with the canapés.”

    It was so cold in the kitchen dinner appeared a hopeless project. Not to mention “canapés”. Looking closer, I saw that atop her unraveling sweaters Edna had pasted a “Hello, I’m Hannah” sticker. Maybe she would acknowledge us if Mrs. Quilliver ever got her name right. Possibly Hannah didn’t like being an ideal, more than a person.


    Fortunately we still had the gift basket, which was assuming critical importance as Nicky toted it to the living room.


    “I saw such an interesting interview with a soldier’s mother,” Mrs. Quilliver prattled on. “Soldiers need strong relationships with their mothers, wouldn’t you agree? It helps to keep them celibate.”
    Conversation with Gran promised to be rough going. I’ll admit Patsy was flattened by that one. Clearly I should not say anything about lady soldiers. “Don’t ask don’t tell” seemed suddenly a sane-seeming policy this Patsy decided to adopt.


    We passed through a long hall that probably ran the length of the house. I could see a muddy looking length of carpet, stairs disappearing upwards and a glass cases filled with moth-eaten dead things.


    “My husband was such a collector,” said Mrs. Quilliver obscurely. She guided me to a wing chair upholstered in a particularly nasty green bargello.


    “There,” she said. “I always think of this as Patsy’s chair. In fact, I’m leaving it to you in my will.”


    Nicky finally spoke up. “Why bother with a will, Gran? Since you’re going to live forever.” He took
    three silver goblets from a drinks cart and gazed at me meaningfully and asked,
    “Iced tea?”

    There was no mistaking his allusion.

    “Please,” I said. “And don’t be stingy with the lemon.”

    There was a bottle of crème de menthe in the gift basket and I saw him doctor all our drinks. Didn’t taste too bad. Nick makes his “iced tea” super-strong.


    Mrs. Quilliver said, “I wish I could offer you a glass of wine, Patsy, but Edna has A Problem and I feel we must be supportive.”


    Nicky raised his goblet. “Here’s to outliving everybody else!” he toasted, saying to me sotto voce, “Gran will be ninety next birthday.”


    Mrs. Quilliver rapped his arm and chortled in high good humor. “Age is just a number, darling.”


    “What a party we’ll have,” sighed Nick, producing a Swiss army knife and attacking a lump of cheese from the basket. I watched hungrily. Sitting in a bar is hard work and a girl needs sustenance.


    Hoping we had finally put “the war” behind us, I asked, “So what would you like for your birthday, Mrs. Quilliver?” You know, just trying to get on top of the spirit of the occasion, instead of under it.


    “Well, I’d like you two to get married,” said the old woman. “But I don’t kid myself I’ll get my wish.”

    She allowed her gaze to drift to a large painting that occupied a place of honor on the wall. It depicted four children, three fair-haired little girls and a dark haired boy, all dressed in Winnie the Pooh-era outfits. The girls sat on the floor playing with a Pekingese so badly painted it might have been a toy. The boy behind them held a bow and arrow.


    “Ninety is such a magic year,” smiled Nicky. “There’s no telling what you’ll get.”


    “I’d also like the dead to walk,” mused the old lady, “Just for one day. So I have somebody to talk to. It’s no fun being the winner if nobody knows you are. Can you believe they said I was such a runt I wouldn’t even grow up? They didn’t think I’d make it.”


    “Triplets, “ Nick hissed at me in a stage whisper, gesturing to the painting. He spread out crackers and attacked a sausage next.


    “The doctor said I would be slow.” Granma smacked her lips appreciatively over her drink. “He was completely wrong about everything.”


    “That’s doctors for you,” I said, but both of them ignored me. It wasn’t Patsy’s turn to speak.


    “You showed ‘em. You’ve led a charmed life, Gran,” Nick flattered the old lady. “Why bother going to the mountain if the mountain always comes to you?”


    “That is not true,” snorted Mrs. Quilliver, “not true at all. No one knows my suffering. Everyone is dead but me.”

    Did Nick’s strong iced tea accelerate or inhibit all this suffering, I wondered?
    “But they’ve been dead so long,” Nick protested. “They were already dead when that was
    painted.”


    Mrs. Quilliver looked thoughtful. “My poor father needed a memento. But they deserved to die. My sisters were so mean. They excluded me from their private language. And my brother kept shooting my pets and saying it was an accident. Death became them.”


    I hoped she wouldn’t think Patsy should already know the story, because I was plenty curious. “Er – what happened, exactly?”


    She was glad to tell it. “The day they died – they were disobedient as always. Skating where they had been told not to – and after they said to my face I couldn’t come!”


    “Lucky you,” sighed Nick. He was bored. “See what I’ve been saying?” The crème de menthe was all used up. Round two was doctored from a silver pocket flask. Bourbon, by the taste of it. Not a guy in fear of mixing. I decided I‘d better pretend to drink.


    Mrs. Quilliver still seemed angry. The past was not her happy place. “Then father adopted Peter and left him all his money. He said in his will that Peter should marry me, but Peter married someone else.”


    I was riveted. “And then what happened?”


    “I got Peter after all,” said Mrs. Quilliver loftily. “Things worth doing are worth doing well. How
    forgetful you are, Patsy. But I suppose a short memory is useful in your business.”


    Was Patsy in politics? I wondered.


    Dearest Nick-Nick-Nicky helped me out. “We just love hearing that story,” he drawled. To me he said, “Gran doesn’t get the vapors. Gran gets even.”


    “Clever,” I murmured. “So how did you do it? How did you get Peter after all?”


    “He called me a “jolie laide”.” She giggled. “That means good in bed.”

    Actually, I speak French. That’s not what it means.
    Standing uncorrected, she continued. “There’s a certain lack of adventure in marrying one’s cousin. I don’t deny it. However, needs must when the devil drives.”


    Hmmm. Who gave the devil the car keys? I was still trying to work this all out when Edna-Hannah appeared. To her home-knitted outfit she had added an old corduroy hunting hat with moth-eaten fur flaps.


    “It’s because she hates noise,” Nicky whispered so stagily I was certain she’d overhear. But what she said was, “Dinner is served.”

    “Nurse Jones will carve,” Mrs. Quilliver announced.
    Placed as it was in the center of the house, the dining room was small and windowless. Its low ceiling made me feel we entered a cave. A masculine-looking woman in old-fashioned nurse’s dress was tackling a roast.

    So there was food.“Hello Patsy,” said the nurse in a deep voice. “I think you like your meat well done?”


    I didn’t, but the roast was almost incinerated anyway so why argue? Patsy had scarfed up sausage, it was too late for Patsy to pretend to go vegan now.


    Nicky refilled his flask from a sideboard bottle labeled, “Lamp Black.” I grabbed a water-glass in self-protection.


    At least the chairs were Mad Hatter armchairs into which we all could comfortably sink. I sat across from a dark painting depicting a fire at sea; overwhelmed by flames, a five-masted schooner was obviously sinking. Above Mrs. Quilliver’s head hung a painting of a huge black dog so hairy was faceless. The gold plate bore the legend: Mumbo, 1941-1949. You tell me what is the point of a dog portrait whose face you cannot see!


    I couldn’t help noticing the nurse’s dark hairy arms as she passed me my plate. I was fairly certain “she” was a man. Another “ideal”? Was Mrs. Quilliver’s life “charmed” because it contained avatars, rather than people?


    “Gravy?” croaked Nurse Jones.


    “Bring it on,” I said, but Mrs. Quilliver shook her head disapprovingly.


    “You can’t afford it,” she told me pointedly. “Too much of the damage is internal.”


    “She’s such a tease,” said Nicky, out loud. “Don’t fall for it. Nurse, what’s the medical opinion?”

    “Everyone gets gravy,” prescribed the nurse, slopping all our plates. “I insist. With the streets so dangerous there’s nothing to enjoy but food.”


    “But Patsy’s lineage has so much heart,” complained Mrs. Quilliver.
    Ain’t that the truth.


    “Patsy will be fine,” said the nurse, resting a huge, work-roughened hand along my arm. “As long as she keeps up her exercise.”


    “Speaking of sex,” said Mrs. Quilliver, turning her fog-lamps on me, “I trust you’re spending the night? I turned on the electric blankets in the Rose Room with my own hands.”


    “I put them in the Blue Room, honey” said the nurse. “It’s got the bidet.”


    It seemed I was dessert. I think I lost my usually hardy appetite at that exact moment. Studying the large black plate in front of me it seemed there was nothing I could eat. Was that kale, foxglove or collard greens?


    I had to spend my time doing something. Usually adding up the shekels is occupation enough. My brother in the antiques business would certainly have remarked on all this silver. It was heavy enough and seemed ancient. Still, the room was so dark it might have been plate. I held my goblet to the candle in an effort to interpret the hallmark.

    “Quis Custodiet Custodes.” quoted Mrs. Quilliver thrillingly, thinking I was trying to read the coat
    of arms. “It’s the family motto. ‘Who out-cleans the cleanest?” .


    Actually, I studied Latin. That’s not what it means. Bread was passed. Stale, of course. Think big croutons.

    “Is this rice?”

    Mrs. Quilliver demanded, showing me a bowl of mashed potatoes. “Edna knows I hate Chinese food. It seems so disloyal in light of the world situation.“

    “It’s mashed potatoes, dear,” croaked the nurse.


    “That woman will take any shortcut,” Mrs. Quilliver muttered obscurely. Nick refilled all our goblets. The “lamp black” smelled like peach schnapps.


    As Nicky slid back into his seat, his foot brushed mine. Or was it the nurse? Or possibly both of them? And what about that look they gave me? Suddenly a moaning sound – human? – seeped into the room. I was so startled I dropped a knife. I could have ignored it if it weren’t for the thumping overhead. The chandelier tinkled threateningly. If I had had a hat with earflaps I would have out it on.


    “She’s restless tonight,” said the nurse. “It’s the change in weather.”


    “Well, can’t you knock her out for dinner?” snapped Mrs. Quilliver.


    “You said no pain control,” Nurse Jones sighed regretfully. “I could give her a Xanax.”


    “I’m not wasting my Xanax on her,” barked Mrs. Quilliver. “That defeats the point.”

    Evidently everyone wasn’t dead. I had to think how Patsy identify this new player, seemingly banging a cane on the floor. The ceiling shook threateningly and the chandelier swung so enthusiastically I slid my chair back, ready to spring for safety.


    “I’ll calm her down.” Mrs. Quilliver, Martyr, wiped her mouth and left a long red smear along the lace. “She just wants attention. She knows she’s being naughty.”


    She walked to the stairs, stooped over, unmistakably, now a ninety-year old woman. I guess the prison guard is a prisoner too. In fact, that’s a much better translation of the “family” motto.


    As her footfalls died away Nurse Jones coaxed Lady Gaga from the sideboard radio. “Just dance,” he/she sang, swaying to the music. Nicky rose eagerly. and they began to dance. I hoped they had eyes only for each other, but no such luck. They were both after me to complete their chorus line.
    A threesome? Not very “original” after all, and not what I’d expected. Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.


    “I take it you’ve tumbled to our little secret,” Nick said, flexing his eyebrows at me.


    “I’m not sure,” I replied. “It’s so dark in here there are probably plenty of secrets still uncovered. Like who is that upstairs?”


    “Oh, that’s the first Mrs. Quilliver. Peter had to divorce her to marry Gran. But Gran promised to
    always take care of her. “ He laughed. “Come on. Dance with us.”


    “Give me a minute.” I rose. “I need to ”powder my nose.”


    “There’s a nice big bathroom upstairs,” Nicky tempted. “Or a cloakroom cubby where you came
    in.”


    That’s just what I was hoping he would say, because I saw where he put the Alpha keys. I melted gracefully into the hallway and out through the kitchen.
    Edna-Hannah sat at the table cleaning an ancient pistol which she had broken down in pieces on the newspaper in front of her. She barely looked up as I departed the house of the people who call things by their wrong names, but she did say goodbye.


    Get it, Officer? I didn’t steal the car, I was trying to report a crime in progress. Clearly they were holding an old lady against her will. But how could I possibly have guessed what Edna-Hannah was planning, just because she was cleaning a gun? Guns need cleaning just like everything else and that entire house was a sink hole. She seemed fine, judging by the last thing she said.

    She said, “You take care now.”Amen, sister. “Right,” I agreed. “Or be taken care of.”

  • The Woeful Victory

    ELIZABETH SIDDAL; The Woeful Victory
     
    Be still.


    It is evening.


    I almost recognized you; who are you


    Fair one?


    Your mouth is stuffed with poppy hair;


    Fate lies coiled between your breasts


    Like a snake. But


    Your tongue’s torn out.


    You are the echo of my thoughts.


    (I am the motionless cradle.)


    Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun.


    Will you free me, O Lady of the Sundial?


    My eyes are growing dim.


    (Perfect love’s not found this side of heaven.)


    I shall paint you vermilion


    Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes


    Melt you foil & verdigris


    to the tune of Canterbury bells.


    Stay awhile, Fair one.


    I almost thought you spoke.


    (I am the face rising from the pool


    to drag the drinker deep.)


    I am not whole, dear lady.


    I am not myself.


    Who are You?


    (I am thyself. What hast thou done to me?)

  • Behind the Wish


    It was hard leaving Brenda. Morton Pinkney Fitzgibbons III looked out the airplane window at his own reflection in the blue lights. His parents didn’t like Brenda. They hadn’t even allowed her to come to the airport. They were always saying disapprovingly how he hadn’t been the same since he’d met her. They didn’t bother concealing their relief that his college was so far away, or smirking that Brenda’s family finances didn’t run to bicoastal airfares. This way she couldn’t “pester” him, they said. Morty had spent the past four years giving it everything he had to get into a prestigious college, but he wondered if he didn’t hate himself a little bit for giving in so easily, for not standing up to them. But heck, just a few months ago he’d been a little kid.


    They were absolutely right when they said he wasn’t the same, and about time too. He’d hardly dated any girls in prep school – date-nights at his all-male school were so formalized he’d pretty much backed off and let his mother do the heavy lifting. None of the girls she picked were easy. She must give them a questionnaire, or a job interview, or something to determine their absolute hopelessness as potential girlfriends. Right from the first Brenda was different. Not just a girl to “begin”, to “experiment” on, as he had imagined in his lonely self- projections. She was the girl. In restaurants people already turned to stare at her and she was only seventeen. It actually was kind of insulting the way his parents attributed his new maturity completely to Brenda. Showed what a spineless jellyfish they’d always considered him.

    That jellyfish, swimming down the darkly stained oak halls of his worthless school, that wasn’t his real self at all. Anyone who knew anything knew that. Look at his reports: “Morton seems to have deep reserves he has yet to draw on” and “excellent work but hardly to capacity.” The school psychologist said, “Doesn’t let anyone get close” and “polite but uncooperative.” Like you could study The Prince in class all day and then make a “buddy” out of the school shrink! What kind of retard did they take him for?


    That creature walking through the halls of Asbury Prep had been more like an animated corpse, or an “astral double”. The real Morty was sleeping, was gathering power. Gathering strength. The real Morty wouldn’t waste his time with their version of “leadership” – because their version of leadership was servanthood. The real Morty was a Champion.


    Pretending to empower you, the school actually harnessed you. Drained you. They demanded lying, insisted on evasion, mandated phoniness and reveled in fakery – they didn’t care who the hell you really were at all. And it wasn’t just Morty who noticed it. Not a kid on his floor dared reveal his true self. Every authentic interaction sapped you – because it turned you into a sap — better hold your fire. Save enough force so you could become who you needed to be, who you were meant to be,
    later on.


    The plane was taxiing to its runway. Morty kept his face averted, absorbing the blue light, so his father wouldn’t attempt conversation. He felt a strange prickling inside his forehead, but it wasn’t pain. When he met Brenda he was taking pills for ulcers, pills for attention, for sleeplessness, for cluster headaches. Turned out all he needed was sex. That as the big secret they had been
    keeping all those years! He guessed it was like being in the army – they kept you deprived to keep you passive. Once you discovered that, you mastered confidence. Each time he locked loins with Brenda freed him a little more. The soggy curtain that had separated him from the universe since childhood fell away. He didn’t need the pills anymore. It made better financial sense to sell them. When he felt this tingling in his forehead he imagined himself head-butting the universe — breaking the glass that separated him from the world.


    Morty picked at the weird fabric of the airplane’s window curtain with his thumbnail. What was this stuff? It was some kind of man-made junk, not plastic, not cloth, more like Fiberglas. That was the trouble with the world these days. Nothing was real. People had been pushing fakes so long they forgot what reality was. Sex was real.


    Connecticut dropped away below him until there was nothing left to see. But still he kept his face averted, hoping his father wouldn’t pull the trigger on another awkward, pathetic conversation. He liked his father – would have said he loved him if love wasn’t a feeling now reserved for Brenda alone. But his father was a decoy, some kind of “staked goat” offered to lure him into letting down his guard.


    His father used to write music – had a band even back when they lived in Stoneyport – but one of the incontestable facts about Stoneyport was that if you lived there year round, you were nobody. So it was just their summer place now and his father was too busy tending other people’s money to waste any more time on progressive jazz. “Progressive jazz” wasn’t even a “thing” anymore, even, nobody did it, nobody had even heard of it. His father’s time was up. The old man tried not-so-
    subtly to blame the kids – they all did that — that was the way grown-ups operated – you were the reason for everything! They did it for you! Guilt, the gift that keeps on giving. At school they were always after you to “assume responsibility”. The school’s motto was “No excuses.” If the dog really ate your homework you needed punishment for having such a freakin’ unruly dog. Morty had been trained to recognize buck-passing by the best-in- show. He knew exactly whose fault everything was.
    Take his mom for instance. She was a screamer.

    She had a super-simple business model: just yell and scream till you get what you want. Amazing how effective it was. Nobody would pay to get that in the real world – not since the concentration camps closed – but in interpersonal relationships “Making a Scene” was the strategy to beat. No one was willing to go up against her. Nobody could outlast her. The thing that really got his goat was she pretended, in the midst of epic rages, to be a competent, polished adult. Oh, yeah, she set herself up as judge as well as executioner! A day didn’t pass without a tweet, email or sticky note about how he had failed her perfect standards. He was sick of it, really. The degrading scenes, the room searches, the “white glove” inspections. He had long since learned to leave nothing personal, nothing of any importance in his room.


    He could imagine her prowling around when he wasn’t there – feeling up his underwear and sneaking looks beneath his mattress, hoping to find the weed, the smokes, the girly mags she could get her wail on about. Nothing there; but there were always Brenda’s phone calls and text messages good for a public session of electro-shock; a thong trophy lifted from her son’s blazer pocket or the wet scrap of bikini discarded on the cabana floor. Scream-a-thon if Morty was using condoms; Shriek-


    a-thon if he wasn’t; take your pick. Good thing she couldn’t get a hold of Brenda’s mom – there was no dad – or she would have made her life a living hell. But Brenda’s mom was one of those unlucky females forced to actually contribute to society instead of just yelling at people – she lived at work – and hospital dispatch don’t take personal calls.


    Morty’s mom was fat. That was her real trouble. Morbid obesity. Her body was so swollen that from a distance she looked like a tiny block placed atop a big one. If anyone ever said anything about dieting – even diets in general – Elsa the She-Wolf went right upstairs and cried. Then she came downstairs and screamed harder. She actually forced her kids to eat ice cream. Bizarre. Morty could burn it off and his father preferred alcohol but it wasn’t doing his little sister any favors.
    His mom’s fashion solution was to wrap herself in shawls. Not working. Who asked for a Hungarian peasant woman for a mother? Frankly, it was embarrassing. There was his tall, distinguished, tired father partnering Hulda the Witch to school events. Bad.


    She was sitting behind him now, talking to Gracie in a baby voice, trying to “persuade” her not to kick her father’s seat back. Gracie was ignoring her — poor Gracie wasn’t able to stand up for herself yet, so passive aggression was all she had going. What hope could there possibly be for her with an example like that? She was finished before she started. Morty knew – he had been forced to listen – that she wasn’t in the “popular” group at her school and surprise! Screaming and threats failed to fix the situation. Face it: his mom made everything worse. Your misery was her modus operandi in life.


    Morty hated leaving Brenda. Everybody said college was so great, but what if college turned out to be another Asbury Prep in disguise? A place where “Gentlemen’s Agreement” meant upperclassmen torturing underclassmen for three long years? Could he stand it? It would be a relief getting away from his parents. His Mom was getting harder to fool – and his dad was sinking so fast it was politer to avert your gaze.


    Mom had allowed Morty to invite Brenda to his pool party. It was all a trick of course. She was trying to find out if they’d been “seeing each other behind her back”. Belligerent as a tank in her red-skirted suit she’d gathered steam watching Brenda lounging in her invisible bikini, belly jewels and hummingbird tats. Swim-suited Morty tried to convince his Mom that his circular red weals were “wrestling burns”; that was a hard enough sell, but when Morty’s father rubbed sunscreen along Brenda’s shoulders Hulda blew like Vesuvius. Only coming down at midnight to make herself spaghetti.


    On the way to the airport the screaming was particularly intense. She lashed them, beat them, drubbed them all with waves of sound; then, the minute they hit the ticket counter she snapped out of it like the psycho from Three Faces of Eve. Sybil from the suburbs.


    Now Mom was taking Gracie to the bathroom. Didn’t trust an eleven year old to go alone. Morty closed his eyes but he could imagine the horrible scene in the aisle, his mother’s huge hips bumping into everything, her tight black dress riding up in little ridges around knees and waist. He vividly imagined her falling into the laps of a pair of horrified strangers, struggling with flight-attendants, burping and farting and shrieking while the pilot appeared personally to help place her in restraints. If only.


    There must be something pleasurable he could do with his imagination; playing Vice Cop3 or texting Brenda a note to send when cellphones were allowed.
    But completely unbidden a new thought popped into his head. What if they were dead? All of
    them.


    Now a new vision; himself walking down an antiseptic corridor, a doctor shaking his head like a metronome. Repeating, “I’m so sorry, sorry, sorry…”
    Then Morty could call Brenda, even in the middle of the night, never mind about her beauty sleep, telling her, “We’re rich.”


    Because he would be, wouldn’t he? Even though his parents moaned and groaned about the expense of two homes and their crushing load of debt, there were retirement funds and college accounts and a pile of insurance because Hulda wasn’t getting left
    penniless like her own mother had been.


    Morty and Brenda would go to Europe — she had never seen it — he could show her all the places he knew and all the places he didn’t know. Wasn’t making love to Brenda under all the bridges of Paris the only education really worth having?


    He reached in his pocket and felt the satiny scrap Brenda had left for him, and it was so reminiscent of her all the blood left his tingling forehead and tumesced between his legs. Morty pulled down his tray table to conceal his excitement.


    But how could he do it? He summoned up the whole of his first class education: the difference between a wish and a goal was a plan. Three people were a lot to ask for. How about a car crash? That would be a start. Get him out of college and visiting a hospital, then he would see what he could do. His parents were renting a car to drive back home so they could see Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and all the other boring obligatory stuff. His father always drove because of his mother’s bad back, and he always carried coffee in case he felt sleepy. Morty still had plenty of sleeping pills; easy enough to give his father a doctored thermos as a thoughtful, parting gift. His mother never drank coffee, she insisted on Earl Grey and if you couldn’t provide that, God help you. It was a plan. A shy, modest beginning of a little plan, but unmistakably, a plan. He drummed his fingers ecstatically on his plastic tray table.


    His father had obviously been awaiting just such a conversational opportunity.
    “Hungry for airplane food?” he teased. Morty said, “Hungry for everything.”

  • A Light Upstairs

    SHIRLEY JACKSON: A Light Upstairs

    This house is empty


    Yet hardly unexplored –


    Something stirs aloft.


    The fat lady’s afraid because


    She cannot climb


    She sits and eats like a lonely child


    Celebrating birthdays


    A cat along each shoulder.


    She lifts her tarot card and listens


    Her own heart gasping in its womb of flesh.


    She fears cars and crowds and planes


    Elevators and department stores –


    Reads only stories where killers


    Are pursued, writes only tales


    Where innocents are stoned.


    It’s hereditary.


    The angry villagers once burned


    Her grandpa’s house.


    She smokes anyway, lighting repeat matches in


    An unsafe mansion where


    None escape alive.

  • “Make Me”

    A Short Play by Alysse Aallyn

    (Lectern flanked by flowers.  A screen with a glamour pic of a young man in his late 20’s- wistful, engaging – someone you’d have liked to know. A young woman, mid twenties, dressed for a funeral in a very tight fitting suit, steps up on the stage and picks up the mike with a becomingly abashed air of charm & professional sweetness)


    MARCI
    Hi, I’m Marci, and I’d like to say a few words about Glenn Godiver. I never saw myself as a person who gives eulogies, but Glenn and I had that kind of relationship. We called it The Mutual Autopsy Society. You do me and I do you.

     (She acknowledges audience laughter) 

    Right? He was so funny! Sometime it took me like a minute to get the joke!


    (Trying to be serious.) 

    If you knew Glenn, you were one of the very, very privileged few. He was a private guy, and although he had more friends than anyone I’ve ever met, he didn’t let just anybody in. But he was SO worth knowing!   I mean, what a guy!  Am I right?  Every guy wanted to be Glenn Godiver and every girl wanted to get with Glenn.  At least that’s what he would say! 

    (Laughs) 

    Naw, you couldn’t stay mad at that guy. At least I couldn’t.  What a sweetie pie!  He was as sweet as pie.

    (Tries to chuck the photo under its chin. Presses a button on a remote and the pictures change to  Marci & Glenn together or with groups of young people.  Traveling, partying.)


    There he is, right where he always wanted to be, the center of attention. He wouldn’t leave while the party was still going on!  When I was going through my pictures I can’t tell you how many I found where there I was on the sofa asleep, waiting for Glenn to feel ready to go home. There’s one!  Because while we were dating those six happy, happy months, I was always looking for some alone time.  Not just face time, face-and-body time. 

     (Inappropriate picture, obviously sex. MARCI  freezes on that picture) 

    Uh oh!  How did THAT get here? 

    (Fake embarrassment.  She zooms in on just the faces, which get a little blurry.)


    That’s better!  I mean, this is the family hour.  Lots of little ankle biters wanting to pay tribute to Uncle Glenn, as well they should. As well they should.  So where was I? 

     (Takes her jacket off and hangs it on the mike stand.  Underneath a skimpy lace camisole) 

    Is it just me or is it getting hot in here?

     (Comes to sit on the edge of the stage, making herself comfortable.  Fake radio DJ voice)

     I’m Yvette DaBomb – welcome to Pillowtalk. It’s dark outside, rain is falling and it looks like we’re locked in here together for the duration, so why don’t I show you all a good time? 

    (Tinny laughter) 


    Yeah, without Glenn the party will never be the same. I remember when we broke up – I broke up with him, contrary to the story I KNOW he was telling some people – it was all about issues.  Trust issues. He used to say to me –

    (bad Nicholson impression) 

    You can’t handle the truth!  And I told him you’re the one who can’t handle the truth!

     (Starting to get steamed) 

    Telling everyone you were looking for a nice girl so you could settle down, I mean, that wasn’t true, was it?  He just wanted to see inside every pair of undies on the West Coast. And I mean, that’s OK! I say, God bless him!  But don’t go around telling me who I can hug.  Who I can text!  Who I can talk to! 

    (Reining herself in.)  

    Oh, he had issues.
    But I liked him just the way he was.  I accepted him. I think that’s what love is; you’ve got to accept people so they can accept themselves.  But Glenn was a difficult person to satisfy. He was always looking – you know – for that next little “tweak”.  There was always just something that needed fixing, something that could be better. “Added value”, he called it.  Am I right?  That’s why he was such a successful entrepreneur; he was always looking for ways to add value. Like he wouldn’t tell me my breasts were too small; he’d always say, “Look at these.”  And he’d show me those pictures on his phone.  I know the police said afterwards there were no pictures of breasts on his phone and of course we don’t want to remember him that way.  But I know what I saw.  Glenn was a “seeker”. Always searching for…something better. 


    When I got the implants he was so happy at first!  32B to a D is a big jump!! 

     (Cradles her breasts – shown off to good effect in the flimsy camisole.) 

    He was like a kid with a new toy, that’s for sure!  He said he only wanted me to be admired, he wanted “the real Marci” to come on out.  He would tell me some of you – don’t take this the wrong way – were saying behind my back that I wasn’t right for him.  I have to say you guys were making it hard for me to be your friend what with all the back chat I was hearing.


    (Works to calm herself)


    Naturally I wanted to check his emails and his Facebook page after he was saying things like that!  And we trusted each other with the passwords – in spite of what he probably told you – plus he always used his dog’s name – Welliver – as his password and you just don’t forget a thing like that. Imagine my shock when I found out those implants he had begged me to get and then to show off to his friends – were another point against me!  “Not exactly wife material”  people were saying!  That kind of thing!! Yeah, I was upset at first and it led directly to our breakup. 


    I mean, he was setting me up!  Am I right? He was setting me up to fail! Then I saw him doing that with other people he said he was “mentoring” (air quotes.)  This is the hardest thing to admit about Glenn – that he acted like an asshole sometimes.  Like his left hand wouldn’t see what his right hand was doing!  I put it down to his competitive spirit.  Just like Welliver – that dog never could resist using his teeth!  Grrrr! Had to get his teeth around something!! I mean, he’s a dog!  So when he plays, you  expect him to play rough.


    There I was stuck with this big bill! Not to mention getting a full Brazilian every two weeks – I mean was that for him or me? Oh, you don’t mind the pain, he tells me.  You like it.  I mean, why would you do this otherwise?  Why would anyone? 


    I told him flat out, I’d do anything to please you.  I admitted it.  What’s it gonna take? You’ve got me, so tell me what to do.  Glenn could be generous, but usually he was more generous after he’d been satisfied. You know what I’m saying.  I mean the guy would give you the shirt off his back –  he did give me the shirt off his back – of course I was naked at the time! (Laugh).  He took my clothes! But he did have a way of dodging responsibility. First guy into the restaurant but when it came time to pay the check, I mean, where was he? Am I off course here?  I felt he leaned just a little too hard on his friends, didn’t you?  But we forgave him!  He said to me, you can work it off.  Clean my house and …other ways.  Called me his little porn star! (More sex photos) Then he sold me that crappy car that never worked!  But I still had to pay for it!    I have to say that made me kind of uncomfortable. Goddess or porn star, Glenn, which is it?  Oh, he was itching to make a porno!  Said, we’re all going to make a million dollars!  Doin’ what comes naturally! 


    I warned him, Glenn, if you do, the jury will come back against you!  Everyone will know you’re not the saint you pretended to be. But he says to me, Marci, there are no male sluts. There’s female sluts and goodtime guys, that’s what and there’s no coming back from it.  (Flips through the pictures in frustration, looking for a good one.) Not like breaking up made any difference because we couldn’t stay away from each other! We were combustible, all right. He always said he never came so hard with anyone else. Even jacking off!  It was always me he wanted to think about.


    So we forgave him!  Didn’t we always?  I know he was pulling these same stunts with other girls – you Jeannie and you Rebecca – he showed me  your emails & texts. Bet you didn’t know about that!  But who could say no to this guy? Look at that! (Zoom close-up of the photo) I mean, who could resist those eyes? Awwww! That’s what he seems to be saying. Awww! Make me! Ya gonna make me?


    (Switches pictures)

    I know we were all getting sick of THAT picture.This  one was taken the day he died. 

     (Naked torso making the “strongman” gesture) 

    He was so proud of his body – as well he should have been. He was in the gym two hours a day turning ugly flab to rock hard muscle.  Sweat is fat crying, that’s what he used to say!  Oh, he used to slap my ass to get me going!   Beat my ass until it hurt. Clocked me too, once, till I saw stars. I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it sometimes. We knew how to push each other’s buttons. He was easy to tease because he had this fake persona and he wouldn’t admit that he had. I mean, I had lost everything– put all my skin in the game – he made sure of that.   I  said, “I’m all in.”  I was completely dependent – but he was still pretending he was free as air! 


     I forget whose idea it was to take these pictures. 

    (Several shower photos).

    They’re good, right?  I mean this could be an Old Spice ad! “Habit Rouge” is what I mean to say.  That’s the stuff he liked.  Called it his “hunting coat.” But he did need new photos for his page because he was so much better toned.  He was bench pressing like 260 – he could lift me with one hand.  I have a photo of that somewhere here. 

    (Shuffles through the photos – some of them are crime scene.)


    How did THAT get there?

     (Fake surprise.) 

    Oh, that’s right.  I’m helping the police. It’s something only I can do, because I was closest to him. I was the last to see him alive.

     (Puts on professorial glasses, takes out a laser pointer) 

    Look at this. Don’t you think there had to be at least two murderers? That’s the first thing I said to them. I mean, who could take advantage of this guy, he was so strong!  I’m surprised they didn’t wait till he was asleep – you know, and vulnerable.  But the police think the attack started right here in the bathroom. You can see there’s a shell casing from a 25 caliber there on the tiles. So she shot him, I guess.  Or that guy did – you know, the people that broke in. Glenn was in trouble with lots of people he owed money to.  He had all these sketchy roommates and then there were the thousands of girls he’s disappointed!  Looking for a wife! 

    (snorts in disbelief)  

    What a line!  “The perfect girl to share  a family and kids. Happily ever after. You know, he said that after death families are raised up together and come together in heaven. I don’t know who he’s with now, though, since he spread himself so thin.  He did  have a rough upbringing you probably all remember – he  talked about it enough.  Inspirational, that’s what it was.   But he couldn’t get away from that family fast enough. 


    Who knows?  I’d really like to know how heaven works.  Maybe you get to select your own company. Bring anyone you want! That must be where he is, don’t you think?  Because he suffered when he died. Heaven’s the right place for those who die young. He didn’t get the chance to do the really terrible things – you know those  things the living  regret, those things we can’t take back or ever undo.


    But the first shot didn’t kill him – you can see here where he went and stood over the sink, probably trying to figure out what had happened. You’ve got to ask yourself, what did he see, there, looking in the mirror?  A guy whose pretty face was shot away?  The police are being real boneheads about this, saying the shot came last!  I mean, I wasn’t there, but ask yourself, what kind of sense does THAT make?  Who breaks into a house to attack a guy in a shower with a knife?  It’s just the stupidest thing that I can think of.  But have it your way, Officer Malarkey. 

    (Rolls her eyes.) 

    You’re the professional!  State-sponsored. servant! Twenty years of crime scene reconstruction! I’m just a girl who loved the victim, who lived there and cleaned the place and picked up after the owner! Naturally my DNA is everywhere. I cleaned up the dog poop too, if Glenn was too lazy to walk Welliver.  Dogs need walking twice a day!  Right!  But I couldn’t be there every minute!  I mean, I had a life, too! I have bills to pay! I had to work!  I was trying to have a life too!
    I even joined Linkups because I said, if you can date, I can date.  You know what he said?  He said, “I’m not comfortable with that.”

     (Mimics Glenn) 

    He made damn sure I texted those guys I wasn’t coming!  “My ex isn’t comfortable with that!”  Then I asked him, so when are you going to GET comfortable with that?  Don’t I deserve a little hottie of my own?  Somebody taking care of me?  How many girls does one guy get? 


    “When I get married” he said.  “You can be bridesmaid at my wedding!  I’ve got my eye on the perfect girl – she’s saying no right now” – he meant you, Kira – “but I’m the guy that turns No into Yes.”  And he was, wasn’t he! He so often was. That was his rep, all right. He always knew how to change your mind and make you want it, that thing you said you would never do. He kept digging till he got what he was after.


    He asked me, “what am I doing wrong with Kira?  How should I play this?  She says she only wants me for a friend!”


    I did wonder if he’d met his match.  What do they call that – the Murphy effect? If you leave every territory after you’re finished with it, looking for new fields to conquer, I mean, eventually you’re going to fall off a cliff! Am I right?  Pissarro and Cortez and all those guys!  Stepped off the world! Right into a pile of skulls. 


    He probably would have made you  marry him Kira, whether you wanted to or not!  You’d wake up the morning after, asking, “What just happened?” I say you dodged a bullet!  But nobody dodges every bullet and not in a tiny enclosed space like that shower. Got him right in the jaw till he was spitting out teeth. They say those low caliber bullets ricochet around in a person’s head.  I mean, this one bounced right off his skull!  Under the skin. He has hardheaded, was Glenn!  Proud of that hardheadedness, too!

     (Raps on her own skull.) 

    Don’t be such a pussy, he used to tell me! You gotta be all business if you plan to get things done!
    The police say those low caliber bullets are the choice of mobsters. You know, mob hits. “Execution style!” I  told them, “Look for bill collectors. He was having trouble hanging onto his house and blaming me cause my credit was in the toilet and he had to hire the moving van for my stuff.”  But Officer Numnutz says, doesn’t your grandfather have a .25 that’s gone missing?  I mean, WHAT kind of relevance can that possibly have? My grandfather can’t find his own teeth!  Everyone has guns, especially around here.  And people gravitate to the little, light ones. “Concealed carry.”  But I’ve never even SHOT a gun. So don’t look at me! 


    So Numnutz says – I’m sorry, Officer Mendez, I see you over there but if you can’t tell the truth in a eulogy then where can you tell it?  He says to me, Look where the guy ran down the hall.  Follow the blood trail. So Glenn’s getting away and they came after him with knives.  These are the defensive wounds – here and here – where Glenn grabbed onto the knife for a moment and held it.  They’re slippery, those things, with the blood flying everywhere.


    Here’s where they gave him the “coup de grace”.  Slit his throat.  I mean, probably, judging from the blood pool. 

    (Acknowledges audience gasps) 

    I mean, GROSS right?  That’s what I said! Heinous stuff!  So here –

     (blurry photo of sock clad foot and bloody shoulder) 

    Here’s where she dragged him back to the shower.  Now why would she do that, Officer Mendez asks me. Maybe she was trying to revive him, Officer Bananas, if that’s really your name. Trying to wash off all that blood. Forgive me if I can’t remember every little detail about everything.  I’ve got stuff on my mind.  I mean, my best friend just died! Died at the peak of his life! So how do I know what murderers would do? 


    Maybe he hit her. Maybe it was self-defense.

     (Picture of Glenn working a punching bag) 

    You know, hit out at her and she was just defending herself.  Like I tried to tell you, he was really strong. He owned guns too.  Unregistered ones. Proud of that. I know I saw one somewhere.  And he had to use a knife to cut the rope when he tied me to the bed. Oh, didn’t I tell you about that? I thought I did – it was all about that porno he wanted to make.  He first wanted to shoot it in the woods. That was his big idea.  Or maybe on the hood of a car in rush hour traffic!  
    Impossible to reason with the guy. Shake some sense into him! What about the looky-lous! They’ll  know about you, about us! What about Kira! What will she say? She’ll drop you like a hot potato.
    The cops say “everybody has an alibi”.  Well duh!  I was miles away!  But do you think the people who – I mean the people who did this if it wasn’t  professional – would even remember?  I mean, you’d  want to forget a thing like this as fast as you could, wouldn’t you?  If you loved the guy?  And everyone loved him.  He was the sweetest, most thoughtful, most generous guy who ever lived. 

    (Fumbles with papers on the lectern, starts to cry)


    Can we get an appletini up here?  That’s what he always ordered for me.  Appletinis. He said, “I like the smell.”  


    I miss him. We had so many plans.  We were going to walk the Freedom Trail. Together.  Before we die. We swore a blood oath. Everyone says that it’s fantastic, that you come back from that trip a different person. 


    OK.  I see you asking me to wrap things up.  To cut it short (throat slitting gesture) I’m getting the hook!  Don’t  worry about it.  I’m used to it. That’s what Glenn used to say he loved most about me, that I knew how to laugh at myself. Before I go I wanted to lead us in a song. (Quavering voice)
    If you get to heaven before I do


    Coming for to carry me home –  come on everybody, you know this one!
    Tell all my friends I’m a-coming after you!
    Coming for to carry me home!  Swing low – sweet chariot –


    (Police officers help her off the stage)
     
    END