Nothing Matters: A Noir Love Story Read online

  & not-very-successful bank robber,

  brings over drinks nods nod back

  words as useful & as rare as hummingbirds in this place

  drink beer down in one,

  follow it with mouthful of bourbon

  barman’s straight back with refill

  settled

  take look around

  man stands by gangway, tattoos stretched tight

  over biceps showing a horse sodomizing Alice, another

  of an American pit-bull Cerberus with three heads & three cocks

  guy’s knocking back slammers could be him could be Z guessed

  in booth to right, two guys before a checkers board,

  on it, twenty-four glasses, twelve filled with silver tequila & twelve with gold several non-entities & prospects crowd middle of bar—

  muggers, rapists, thieves no doubt

  staring ahead, yet apparently in conversation, at end of bar, owners of this joint—

  two faggots with more muscles than donegal bay, self-styled

  daddies of sleaze, godfathers of the gratuitous

  busting for piss, spatchcock

  book on table, dangle & drop

  huge lugie into beer, watch it float to bottom, fluorescent

  octopus, knock back bourbon, cross sticky floor to gents

  last time this place saw a mop & bucket, noah was cross-fertilizing sheep

  mirrors

  caked with extracted hardened snot aroma

  more brutal than brut, more number 2 than number 5 slip

  on dark yellow liquid unbutton urinal

  full of cigarette & cigar butts, swirl them around

  in tobacco soup hear door open

  shake,

  fold, button

  turn

  shadow falls across face, instinctively raise arm in protection fuck!

  blow catches muscle not bone in right forearm

  brachiordialis! gonna bruise gonna hurt

  whoever did it is trying to do it again see rush of denim & corduroy,

  mop of ginger hair, mouth open, black-toothed where there are teeth, globs

  of green & purple where there aren’t, warts size of walnuts

  the gourd

  slipping about on piss-stained floor, pull out

  knife & aim for rushing centre

  as thing he’s wielding bears down

  baseball bat? iron bar? hoover attachment?

  dodge sideways, pull knife across, slice

  horizontally, hear his van halen t-shirt rip, feel

  heavy folds of flesh tear, muscles fissure

  rectus abdominis his swing

  loses energy & weapon—

  crowbar—

  clangs to floor

  down holding guts that won’t be held, spilling

  over floor, colors of drab rainbow flip him

  over spit in face dying

  unzip his jeans—the gourd goes commando—

  pull out cock & balls raspy is the gourd

  hands do a little flap

  as if shaking off water or singing “mammy”—

  well, from here the sun doesn’t shine best

  pull his cock up so root is visible, cut

  halfway thru, twist & twist, tug

  & tug, & it comes off—blood all over the place—

  throw it across toilet floor, it rolls into a corner

  cockroaches & giant silverfish stream out of nowhere, cover

  the thing watch as the gourd’s eyes roll

  back into his forehead idea

  cut off his hairy balls

  wrinkled skin attaching them to body, thin, smells of toe-jam hold them gently,

  cradling newborn kittens (ugly fuckers others

  would have drowned at birth)

  sit on the gourd’s chest &,

  using knife, thumb & forefinger, pluck out his eyes, slip them

  into pocket—later mail these to Z instead of his cock push

  the testicles into the gourd’s empty black sockets, arrange

  them wall-eyed

  stand up,

  stand back,

  admire handiwork

  nice

  roll the gourd into shitter,

  prop him against toilet bowl,

  close door behind thirsty work

  walk thru bar, drink beer, pocket paperback

  one of the owners says,

  “come back soon”

  say,

  “oh, yes yes”

  close door to the slaughterhouse as the ramones’ “pinhead” starts up on jukebox

  dog pissing up right back wheel of motor, staring

  off into distance as if looking for a friend

  thing about dogs hate dogs

  still holding knife & while it’s primarily designed

  for stabbing & cutting, wonder what it’s like

  for throwing

  dog’s nearly finished

  don’t want to damage paintwork,

  wait until he shakes & moves off

  thwump!

  catch it behind right ear,

  blade goes in all of its six inches

  dog

  drops

  instant

  dead

  walk

  over

  blade

  thru

  skull,

  brain,

  sits embedded in dog’s mouth, shiny

  prosthetic tongue dog’s eyes bulge,

  fur matted, fleas dance around muzzle

  fucking hate dogs

  idea

  bugger trying to get knife out have to put

  pressure on dog’s skull with foot to extract blade skull

  a little squashed with weight but eventually get knife out

  & wipe it on dog’s coat

  pick up corpse, place it on backseat of car

  nice present for someone—

  Z & Z’s pooches

  something about the gourd’s eyes about

  dog’s lips about

  the sea & all the things unknown there

  watch as a black tail zigzags over the hood,

  disappears at speed into the sky

  dog is death-farting

  juice up motor, open all windows

  look in mirrorlook at reflection

  “drive, it sd, for

  christ’s sake, look

  out where yr going”

  see

  splash of dark red urine on rear window

  take cd from bag, slip it

  in, flip thru tracks, flick

  thru memories…

  Simulation Station

  …and find “our song”—

  “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon, put it on, play

  the opening chords,

  turn it off.

  I don’t need music to jog my memory.

  Memory—

  maybe I haven’t been completely honest

  with you.

  With myself.

  With others. I wanted to fuck X

  from the minute I saw him.

  I would have done,

  I would have done it

  right there and then.

  In the toilets. In a broom closet.

  Under the goddamn buffet table. But I held back.

  Wanting him

  to want me. To imagine it before

  it happened. Simulate it in his mind, in his

  fantasies, project an unreal me,

  more perfect,

  less real.

  Three days… The time between Christ’s death

  and resurrection, the time

  he preached to the fallen angels—

  I heard his voice. The phone

  rang and I knew it was X. Listened

  to that voice. Knew that I’d give myself

  to him that night. Take his life

  from him. As he knew it.

  Give never to get back. Take

  never to ask.

  We met
in a bar, we had a few drinks—sweet cider for me,

  beer and a bourbon chaser for X.

  After five minutes, he said,

  “I really want to kiss you.”

  And I replied,

  “That wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

  And I took his hand,

  led him out of the bar

  to my car, to a motel, saying nothing all the while,

  wouldn’t let him kiss me, let him

  fuck me, let him

  fuck me hard, let him

  fuck me again and again—sucked him

  until he cried for me to stop. Kissed him

  on the cheek, said,

  “I have to go now.”

  Saw him roll in the soiled sheets—

  an albino alligator death toiling in a shroud.

  Didn’t call. Made him wait.

  Gave him scraps. Gave him hope.

  Three days later. Again.

  Gave him head. Gave him less.

  Each time. Each time he wanted more.

  Each time, I pulled him in, played him out.

  “Time,” I told him, “I don’t have

  time or space in my life.”

  He looked at me lost, what could he do,

  how could he make time, make space.

  “Take away a life,” I explained.

  “Kill a man.”

  He looked up at me from the sodden bed

  with the eyes of Raoul, with the eyes of all the men I’d fucked—

  in all the ways I’d fucked them.

  Problem was there was a flicker in those eyes,

  the glowing end of a fuse, something

  different from the others, more intelligent,

  darker, and the fuse burned straight back to his heart

  igniting a love I hadn’t seen before, a love

  that I thought had died in me

  the day I didn’t recognize my mother.

  11:45am and the phone rings off the hook. Drinking

  pomegranate juice through a straw, my jaw bruised,

  a Redondo Beach sunset. I stare

  into the mirror, let the squawking phone ring.

  My eyes are grey.

  Has he told you that?

  Sometimes silver, sometimes molten lead.

  I suffer from astigmatism—

  my left eye slightly cocked as if I’m not focusing on what’s right before me

  but

  on what’s to come.

  The future not the present. Whereas X

  is all about the past, what might have been.

  Memories.

  The phone stops ringing

  and then

  starts again.

  I answer not recognizing the number.

  “………”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “………”

  “No, I don’t. Sorry.”

  “………”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “………”

  “I’ve driven through Rancho Cucamonga but never stopped there.”

  “………”

  “I hired him to find my missing husband.”

  “………”

  “Yes.”

  “………”

  “That’s very unfortunate.”

  “………”

  “How dreadful.”

  “………”

  “That’s a rather vague description.”

  “………”

  “Inverted-cross necklace, tattoos on his knuckles.”

  “………”

  “No, I can’t say I do, officer.”

  “………”

  “Of course.” I pretend to write down a name and number.

  “………”

  “Good day to you.”

  So, X has killed The Gourd.

  If I didn’t want to see X, I hear you thinking,

  why hire The Gourd to find and follow him? Well,

  if I know where he is, I know he’s not with me.

  If that makes sense.

  I know he’s not waiting

  in a corridor, down an alley, sitting

  behind a newspaper at Starbucks, looking

  for me. I know he’s not hunkered down

  in a car outside my apartment reading

  one of those boring books, one eye

  fixed on the door, the sidewalk, the next table.

  After he killed the first two, I needed a break.

  Take some time off from men and I decided to go to Babylon,

  to a hotel I knew there.

  He followed. He always did.

  Always does. Maybe not now.

  Maybe.

  The hotel, called The Hotel Notre Dame, was a favorite of mine.

  The staff respected your privacy.

  None of them blinked at the succession of men

  who entered and sometimes left my room.

  The maids aligned the scores of shoes I threw in the bottom of wardrobes,

  hung up my dresses strewn around the room,

  tidied away the bottles of sweet cider I’d ordered from room service,

  the untouched club sandwiches, the half gnawed California rolls.

  While explaining how he killed my politician lover,

  I sucked him off, his semen

  spurting over my chin at the exact same time

  as his

  final

  full

  stop.

  Period.

  While he told me about the ex who couldn’t let go,

  how he’d cut off his fingers and toes

  so he could no longer hang on, I kissed

  the nape of his neck and jerked

  him off slowly but firmly, felt

  the warm cum in the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger, licked

  it

  off.

  Swallowed.

  Told him to leave.

  He said he would never kill a third.

  But he has now.

  That one stupid rule.

  I’ve made him overstep the mark.

  I always have done.

  The next time we met,

  he told me about the nightmares,

  the shrinks, the lies.

  The chitinous black tail always out of reach,

  saliva shiny.

  I didn’t care. I never do.

  But something in me wanted him.

  Wanted the stories. Wanted the control.

  Wanted him to want me to want him.

  And I did.

  I needed him.

  Needed him to kill them.

  Get them out of my head. Out of my memory.

  Clean. A clean slate. Tabula rasa. Palimpsest.

  And that’s how it felt after my father killed Raoul.

  He found him up a ladder peering into my room. I knew,

  of course, lying there with my legs open, a see-thru thong,

  white lace bra, pretending to read Blood on the Dining Room Floor.

  Saw his head, hands pressed either side,

  wings that would never save him,

  then his head move back,

  and a shout and a thud,

  and my father standing over Raoul’s twisted body.

  While my father called the police and the paramedics, I masturbated

  on the bed, my mind, for the first time blank, no fantasies, just

  the physical sensation, overwhelming, intense, void of men. Still

  flushed when the police interviewed me, still

  tingling with the incredible whiteness of the orgasm,

  a field of ice,

  a glacier.

  “You will say to me it has not happened

  and I will answer yes

  of course it has not happened

  and you will dream

  and I will dream and cream.”

  An accidental death.

  Both mine and Raoul’s.

  A last fall

  and a foreve
r

  falling.

  I pick up the phone,

  dial a number,

  ask a favor.

  Tell them where I think he is.

  Two of them this time

  and this time I need it done.

  Need it over.

  No more following.

  No more chases.

  No more motels and hotels and restaurants and bars.

  The bruise

  on my face a heat map of Mars—oranges

  and greens but mostly blues.

  I plug my iPhone into the portable speakers while I change.

  “Venus in Furs” by The Velvet Underground, followed by

  “Don’t Call Me Pain” by The Pop Group. I dress

  in a Neptune-blue sweater,

  Vivian Westwood jeans over knee-length black leather high-heel boots.

  I gather up my things, close the zip on my bag.

  Step to the blinds, lift two,

  separating them with my thumb and forefinger, suppress

  a memory, look out onto the courtyard wanting

  and not wanting a black Thunderbird to be there.

  Splash of dark red urine on window.

  I look at the barometer on the wall, the mercury

  is falling,

  dark clouds drift,

  overhead…

  Memory Motel

  …rain thunderstorm roads slick & wet

  doing a century doing a ton

  lean down,

  flip open glove compartment check what’s there

  half-empty bottle of absinthe,

  a shooter

  must’ve left them there last night

  hold on

  couldn’t have

  that was a car of another color

  must be someone else’s booze,

  someone else’s piece

  some other bozo

  oh, well

  before return to motel,

  go for spin on freeway

  yank car over

  gun thing thru oncoming cars

  up on ramp

  &

  onto

  long

  unwinding

  black

  liquorice

  rain’s heavy,

  thick mist turning cars that have braved it into indistinct blurs of color

  crank up music,

  sing along to killing joke’s “requiem”

  can’t see squat

  open windows,

  air causes arms to erupt in goosebumps

  pass a car,

  swerve in front making driver hit brakes,

  slide & spin onto hard shoulder

  hear his horn until

  opening power chords of queens of the stone age’s “go with the flow”

  drown it out

  drum fingers on steering wheel

  blur of colored metal thinning out & rain still thickening