Supernatural Noir

“Bet you don’t believe me,” she said.

“You might be wrong.”

As if saying this bridged some vital distance between them, he felt close to her, shrouded in a thick, honeyed sexuality, and believed he knew her completely.

“Am I?” she said.

“Can’t you tell? I thought you were onto me.”

“Quit teasing!”

“I’m not teasing,” he said. “Can’t you tell?”

He pulled her atop him, nuzzled her breasts. He thought he could taste her resilience, her fragility, the lesser hopelessness she might call hope, all braided together in the chewy plugs of her nipples.

“It’s me you want?” she asked, tremulous, a virgin asking for proof. “It’s really me and not just . . . things?”

“You,” he said with such a wealth of solemnity that his mood was broken, but then she pushed his hand between her legs, saying, “See . . . see how much I want you, see . . . ,” and he was with her again, nearly breathless, easing two fingers inside her. Her ass churned, her tongue was in his mouth and she moaned at the same time. They rolled and tossed, the dim mirror filling with their thrashing shadows, the walls billowing, fiery specks jiggling in midair, all locked into the rhythm of the tumbling bed. He had a feeling of liberation and unfamiliarity, as if this were something more powerful and involving than the sex he remembered, but when he sat up, braced on one hand, preparing to enter her, he froze, a cocaine freeze that left him dead and empty, like a machine whose current had been stopped. He felt isolated, embedded in miles of darkness, and he thought if he were to shift his head an inch, the wires holding it in place would snap. His elbow ached from the strain of supporting his weight, and his forearm began to tremble.

“What’s wrong?” she said, urgency burring her voice, trying to guide him between her legs.

Thoughts poured from his head like dirty water down a drain. He was poisoned, out of his element, unable to speak. His erection wilted. The girl took him in her mouth again and that did the trick that sent a jolt of current flowing through the dead machine. But when he entered her, when she lifted her legs, her heels digging into his calves, and she cried out, “Oh God, God . . . ahh God,” her speech had the rushed monotonous cadence and impersonal fervor of somebody calling a horse race, and he remained distant, never losing himself in the turns of her body, fucking her with mechanical ferocity and never once speaking her name.

——

Years before, a couple of years after he ran away from home, he and a girl named Chess had fled LA, pla

He talked about Chess a great deal over the ensuing years; he told their story of squandered love to friends, to marks, to Charlie. The story became his big-ticket item, the heartbreakingly honest confessional he used to impress people with his depth, his soulfulness, convincing them to let him get close enough so he could take advantage of them in some way; but the more he talked, the less he remembered of what he had felt, as if each word was carrying off a fragment of experience, until he could no longer recall how it had actually been between them. He could summon up her face, but it was a dead face, a police sketch of a face, devoid of nuance, of energy.

This girl now, lying with her pale back to him, dozy from sex . . . no way he felt about her as he had about Chess. That is, if what he recalled wasn’t total bullshit. But this girl . . . What was her fucking name? Tammy, Trudy . . . something like that. Tracy. He couldn’t deny she had a certain appeal. Maybe it was her ignorance, the sheer doggedness of it—maybe that bespoke a measure of i

“Hey, Tracy.”

He nudged her and she made a complaining noise. He flicked on the bedside lamp and said again, “Tracy!”

“Oh, Lord! I forgot.” She squinted up at him. “When I hitchhike I never use my real name. It makes me feel safer out there. I know it’s silly. I meant to tell you, but . . .” She flashed a lopsided grin. “We got a little busy.”

She scooted up to a sitting position and gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “Sorry.”

He caught a whiff of Elfland Hospitality Pak Shampoo.

“My name’s Carole,” she said. “Carole with e on the end.”

For some reason it seemed harder to dump a Carole than a Tracy, and he was tempted to relent. Then she began to prattle like she had in the car, wondering if there was a place open where they could get some food, probably not, it must be two o’clock already, and she couldn’t hardly wait to hit Seattle, she bet the seafood there was awesome . . .

“Listen, Carole,” he said. “I don’t think we should travel together.”

Uncomprehending, she gaped at him.

“I’ll give you money for the bus,” he said. “And enough so you can get situated in Seattle. But that’s it.”

She made a weak, half-completed gesture toward her brow. “What do you mean?” she asked. “I thought . . .”

“I don’t want to argue,” he said.

She seemed prettier than she had earlier, the sharpness of her face less evident. “But we were . . .”

“And don’t be telling me how wonderful it can be,” he went on. “If we stay together, all that’ll happen is one of us will rip the other off.”

She started to object and he said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars,” seeing this as a stroke of moral genius, charity abolishing the sin of theft, saving himself grief and at the same time giving the girl a shot. He would still have six thousand left.

“I don’t give a damn about your money!” she said tearfully. “I want to be with you!”

“It’s not going to happen.”

She let out a thin cry and clasped her hands to the side of her head.

“It’s for the best,” he said. “If you stay calm and think about it, you’ll see that.”

She hugged her knees, rocking back and forth, doing her mad-girl impression, singing tunelessly, breathily, the song of a fly buzzing in an asylum window, drunk on sunlight.

“Stop that!” he said.

Her keening rose in pitch.

“What are you . . . fucking nuts? Talk to me.”

He expected her to start blubbering, but she didn’t leak a single tear and kept on with her broken-teakettle noise.

“That’s not going to get it,” he said. “Acting all crazy and shit. I’ve seen crazy, I know crazy. You can’t sell that shit here.”

Her eyelids drooped so that slits of white were visible beneath them.

Fed up with her, he pulled on his pants, shrugged into his shirt and stepped out into the breezeway, slamming the door behind him. The Dodge minivan he had parked beside was gone. He wished that he hadn’t left his car keys in the room. He could have booked. A thousand dollars? Christ, what was he thinking? She was likely used to selling her ass for fifty, a hundred tops. The cool air soothed him, tuned his anger lower. He dug the loose change from his pocket and went padding barefoot along the breezeway toward the vending machines next to the office. If he got her something to eat, that might placate her. It might be worth driving somewhere—that pancake house back on the interstate might still be serving. Once she was loaded with carbs and sugar he could talk her down from hysteria, open a dialogue, reason with her, and in the end they would share a hug, a semichaste kiss, alas, alack, adios, adieu, we’ll always have the Elfland.