Nothing Matters: A Noir Love Story Read online

  Who wants that?

  My thing is the steely shiller moon,

  the color of my eyes on summer days,

  silver in autumn, slate in winter, smoke in spring—

  always adularescent.

  His wife Lillianne, the maid—

  the domestic manager as my father called her—

  thrummed with energy

  like a nuclear-reactive cat, all spit and sharp teeth

  battened down under tight clothes and a severe hair do.

  A look I sometimes use.

  Some men like floaty, others severe,

  yet others innocent.

  Innocence. In no sense.

  I got that one from X.

  His words.

  Funny how one becomes the other over time.

  Pick up tics and nuances, verb use and cursing.

  Merges.

  Even our sentences changed—

  mine, once long and sinuous became staccato, clipped;

  whereas his, almost machine-gun in rapidity,

  spread and flowed out,

  a muddy delta.

  Yes—our sentences changed.

  Mine to life,

  his to death.

  Think about it.

  Which would you prefer?

  Imagine sitting in a cold hut, no food

  except a rotten potato, a leather sole,

  someone else’s fingernails.

  Aren’t we all waiting for our number to be called?

  Look down at your left forearm, the

  pale traces of ink,

  of numbers.

  Raoul I guessed was in his forties,

  Lillianne in her thirties—

  a decade of difference.

  X is older by the same margin.

  I wonder where he is. No,

  I don’t.

  When Daddy wasn’t at home,

  Raoul subbed as chauffeur.

  I asked him if I could go see my mother’s body.

  When Daddy told me she had died,

  nothing happened. I mean,

  nothing happened

  to me.

  I didn’t faint, I didn’t cry,

  I didn’t rush up the stairs and throw myself on the bed.

  I nodded as if he were explaining astrology to me.

  He asked if I was OK, gave me $500.

  As Lillianne wore the trousers,

  Raoul asked permission to take me to the funeral home.

  Maybe Lillianne did teach me a thing or two

  about manipulation

  and control.

  Maybe I unconsciously learned from her blank expression,

  her tight mouth,

  her coldness.

  She said fine, glad to get this sulking teenager out of her slicked-down hair.

  I dressed in a white cut-off T-shirt,

  covered it in a black chiffon throw,

  black denim skirt, and white hi-top Converse.

  Clothes are important—

  not as a means of seduction—

  if you wanted, you could snag a man wearing a sack and bowler hat—

  but as a means of expressing your moods.

  These clothes said,

  “I know I’m still a teenager but I’m aware of my emerging sexuality

  but you will have to stay away even though you want me.”

  The black chiffon throw said,

  death, said silence, said mourning.

  Lillianne frowned when she saw me but said nothing.

  We pulled out of the drive in my Daddy’s Land Rover Discovery.

  The road led to the freeways,

  the freeways led everywhere

  and everywhere was where I wanted to be.

  Where I went. Where I’m going.

  Raoul waved. Lillianne ignored him,

  turned back to the house before we’d cleared the gates.

  I looked in the rear-view mirror.

  I always do. I always am—

  the front-view mirror is yet to be discovered,

  invented.

  If only.

  The funeral home was somewhere in Brentwood.

  Raoul remained silent during the drive.

  I fiddled with the radio.

  A mixture of funk and soul,

  country and bluegrass,

  static and galloping voices.

  Raoul stared ahead.

  I watched the houses, the sprinklers, the dogwalkers.

  The invisible people behind the walls,

  just like Daddy and me, just like my mother—

  no more.

  Raoul had put on a plaid shirt and beat up old sneakers to go with his shorts.

  He smelled of rolling tobacco and sour plums.

  X smells of beer and Issiye Miyake, of

  garlic and strawberry mousse.

  Raoul’s moustache, flecked with grey, twitched as he decided which streets to take.

  His nose, broken in a bar fight—so I heard my father tell my mother—

  sniffed as if he were tracking something invisible.

  X’s nose is likewise broken,

  a split in the cartilage,

  the left nostril slightly larger than the right,

  a small scar on the bridge in the shape of a nail paring.

  I lifted my right leg, placing

  my sneaker on the dashboard, a glimpse

  of white cotton between my legs, a kite

  lost in sand dunes, a sail

  on a silted river, a dazzling heron

  lost somewhere in the desert.

  Raoul’s moustache twitched,

  twitched again as if he were about to sneeze.

  I let my hand

  dangle between my legs, felt

  the hairs rise on them, a sea

  of corn stirred by a July wind.

  Looked at Raoul’s lap.

  Raoul coughed, adjusted the rear-view mirror,

  sniffed, smelled my scent,

  not just the perfume.

  “This is the street,” he said.

  “I don’t know if I want to see her now,” I replied, my voice quiet.

  Raoul pulled the car over to the curb.

  “You go in. I have a few errands to run,” he said staring down the street,

  transfixed as if a brontosaurus had waddled drunkenly out of the shopping mall.

  “OK,” I said opening the door and stepping down.

  He pulled away, the vehicle rumbling low and steady.

  The funeral home, air-conditioned cool, stank

  of manufactured smells—fake vanilla, faux lavender, fabricated lilac. Strange

  to think that the bodies X made were stored in similar places,

  their bones broken, their skin slashed, parts amputated.

  I wonder what the morticians think, whether

  they try to make the bodies look normal,

  make them look human;

  but then, why should they?

  They’re soon to be hidden in the earth,

  dispersed into the air.

  Some have never been found.

  May never be found.

  Some are still rotting away, deliquescing.

  What a word. Deliquescing—

  “to become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air,

  as certain salts,

  to melt away…

  Botany: to form many small divisions or branches.”

  I sat in reception while they checked my ID,

  whatever that is.

  A laminated representation of facts about who you are? Yet,

  we change; we are never who we think we are,

  who others think we are.

  We change when we are with others, when

  we are alone, when we think

  we are alone.

  A man in a dark grey suit showed me into a room.

  The walls were pale cream, the carpet a darker beige.

  Flowers floated in stone bowls at each corner of the room.
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br />   Gerbers.

  A dark wood casket sat in the middle on a trestle table

  covered in a fabric so white it glowed.

  The man opened the lid.

  Inside, a woman I didn’t recognize.

  I hadn’t seen my mother in three years. Hadn’t

  thought about her for nearly as long.

  I’d thought of Daddy, I’d even thought of some of his girlfriends.

  I thought of boys at school who had begun to look at me,

  too frightened to talk, too scared to touch.

  I thought of the teachers, their ever-lengthening stares

  and the shake of the head at their own thoughts. I

  didn’t really have any girl friends to speak of.

  A few shopping acquaintances, cinema buddies.

  I never really got on with other girls, other females.

  Still don’t.

  My father had my mother’s body flown in from Fresno.

  I didn’t even know she was living there. Didn’t ask.

  Not sure

  I really cared.

  Spent my days in thought, in books, in preparation.

  Mother had had a series of mental breakdowns.

  I hadn’t noticed.

  She drank but seemed happy.

  Happy in her stupefied walks around the garden,

  her naps by the pool,

  her afternoon massages and saunas.

  There was talk of institutions.

  Talk of operations.

  Procedures.

  The doctors made her…

  The Voyeur

  …write down dreams

  millions of people forgotten

  no, not forgotten—unremembered,

  called a man about them

  wrote down some more

  black tail shiny, wet, chitinous

  drew pictures

  read books

  told another about nightmares

  trapdoor spiders wait for prey

  to disturb silken trip lines running like abandoned railways—

  terminals

  made job look slapdash, frenzied,

  work of hit man botching it,

  professional feigning amateur,

  whore pretending to love it

  said nothing

  kept schtum & mum together in same room

  dreams played twenty-four hours a day,

  technicolor,

  surroundsound,

  smellovision

  all the senses in the world

  leading from passion back to uncertainty, life

  moved in reverse not frightened of truth but,

  until now very good at excusing it, concealing it—

  a disfigured child

  in plain words,

  it was all that trees & forest thing

  death happening, whole world oblivious

  blind blind to time passing without incremental growth in Z’s feelings

  skin on body suffered sensations of pure ecstasy, then mind

  tattooed with agonizing doubt 1… 2… 3… 4… 5

  wanted to stop playing mars & venus, stop

  floating in neptunian swimming pools, stop

  watching mercury rise to red in swollen cock, stop

  goddamn saturnalia of it all

  once down to earth & now here

  on road to pluto with its pomegranate seediness

  starlings in infinite spiral processions paint whirlpools in the sky—

  mazes, labyrinths

  Z had dangled it

  rather than bite it off, chew it up, then spit it out,

  panted & drooled for it, slobbered & howled for it

  running around in circles, tail on fire—

  worm ouroboros swallowing it all, swallowing it whole, swallowing it wholesale

  just for a taste

  just for a touch

  just for a time

  driving thru desert with monkey on shoulder,

  monkey in threesome with devil & deep blue,

  pulling a train with the nephilim,

  spit-roasted by beelzebub & belial

  go back?

  go on?

  asshole of the world or bejewelled navel?

  Z fed caviar then fed scraps

  no more leftovers

  do anything

  did anything

  rattlesnakes, coiled like discarded necklaces,

  sunbathe on asphalt,

  rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle

  second man—killed for fun

  life irreplaceable but known joy in taking of

  silence as blood stops circulating,

  heart finally rests,

  eyes flicker out to dead satellites

  man, an ex-lover, wouldn’t give up ghost

  that’s what we are when we are no longer with the one we love

  that’s what we are when we are no longer with the one we loved

  existence outside of the material

  they strip you of things so you are no longer you

  my glasses,

  my hair,

  my shoes

  insubstantial image forever becoming faint,

  forever dissolving, until person you were

  for them & with them, now

  a collection of abstract portraits covered in dust,

  invisible behind glass reflecting similar paintings names on a list a… b… c… d… e…

  layering of memory

  until original obscures

  when we meet someone again,

  meet them by mistake, by

  chance, by

  appointment, we travel back

  in time, the present you an alien,

  foreigner,

  intruder,

  fake

  man to kill tried to make memories of Z real again

  trying not to

  tried to make substance what was not, what was far from

  struggled to move on

  here on road

  wanted to feel cold breath of his monstrous fear wanted to

  see how much horror he could contemplate,

  how many hours of darkness

  if he wanted flesh then he could taste his own

  to take another life would diminish distance to Z

  vacant place filled with our entwined bodies,

  our melding minds

  writhing in invisible gas

  set drink next to his, said,

  “best out of nine, 50 bucks a game,” said,

  “you rack ‘em, we’ll toss to crack ‘em”

  won first three games,

  balls flying everywhere,

  crazy atoms,

  pockets eating them up,

  speedheads popping bombers,

  black & whites,

  blues & reds

  crowd watching,

  quiet as a crematorium except for sound of pool balls

  let him win next two

  buddying up

  bought beers, played for cheers

  four each final game

  two down from break,

  balls spread tasty,

  tempting

  could feel shadows behind,

  smell cigarette smoke hanging low over green table,

  poland on a misty morning

  pock! pock! pock! pock! pock! rat-a-tat-tat

  eight-ball winking,

  shark’s eye,

  infinity pupil

  chalked & stroked, backspin

  eight-ball dropping into pocket,

  black sun setting in blacker sky

  50 bucks up

  drank two more beers

  cold-cocked him in car park

  hotfooted it to crash pad

  computer games,

  empty old-gold 40 ouncers—

  accoutrements of existence,

  life’s knickknacks

  fireman’s carry up back stairs

  would he fight? wasn’t sure

  when you fight & fuckr />
  you are most alive & closest to death

  stairs zigzag up side of building,

  lines on seismograph

  tied him to chair with electrical flex

  is the taste for life so strong one can never believe its possible extinguishment?

  played prune metatarsal tree snip snip snip snip

  this little piggy went to frying pan, this

  little piggy sautéed in soy, this

  little piggy tastes of roast pork, this

  little piggy on yr tongue, & this

  little piggy went snipsnipsnip all the way to bone

  repeat

  recorded screams & pleadings,

  photographed stumps & bleedings

  gagged him

  drove away into twinkling night

  called it in anonymously from payphone

  didn’t stay for sirens

  had one of my own to attend to

  showed Z pics,

  played Z noises

  camera, voice recorder

  kissed back of neck,

  ran hand up thigh,

  stroked cock,

  hard but pliable,

  typewriter platen

  & what Z’d done

  what Z did

  Z’s tongue

  Z’s tongue

  thick wad & tendrils

  of sputum

  & come

  tail dropping

  down into picture

  whiplash

  showed me door,

  showed me way to go home

  feral chameleons rock back & forth on thorned branches,

  wall-eyed, indeterminate

  two days later,

  dreaming of maryoshka dolls served up on a bed of lettuce

  miniature jabba the hutt,

  chewbacca,

  darth vader,

  obi-wan & r2-d2

  dressed all in pink attached to the end of foot dreaming of

  mini hot-dogs, chess pieces embedded inside

  eating pork rinds stuffed with ivory netsuke

  going fucking mad

  shrink says

  nothing

  talk says

  nothing more

  writes prescription

  no need

  no want

  swallowed dry

  bandit raccoons slip out of woods,

  masked eyes twinkling with mischief

  visit Z’s apartment,

  one Z’s husband didn’t know about,

  one festooned with trophies—

  tie, shirt, pair of mickey mouse jockeys

  given everything to be with Z, job, life

  just another one to manipulate,

  to seduce,

  discard

  sanity tested,

  invented new realms of normality

  Z had money didn’t have to worry about things like that

  Z had

  time Z had

  words

  found hours to fit

  played with mind