Fist of the Spider Woman (8 page)

“Well, you can meet your friend down at daycare 'til you're old enough to be here legally.” The Asshole Lesbians in line behind me all start to snicker. I take a step back. I smile a goofy, shrugging, what-can-I-do kind of smile. Goes over pretty good with the ladies. Even with this style-less idiot, in desperate need of a support bra. I wouldn't be scared to fucking pop her one right on the mouth for patronizing me. It's just I haven't completely given up hope on getting in. I'm broke, and the way I see it, there's purses and pockets to be picked, drinks to be nicked, and lots of Lesbos just waiting to be had. I got work to do tonight, and fighting Quasimodo won't help one bit. I saunter away, lean against the next building, light a smoke. I flip the collar on my customized jean jacket. I give the whole eager lesbian lineup my profile. Very James Dean. Me, leaning poetic under the streetlight on a gloomy night. Young and punk and lonely.

I fondle my most prized possessions in my pocket. You know, those tiny things you keep close by, for luck. A smooth black pebble from the island—that otherworldly wilderness I call home—and the dented, tarnished ring my old lady whipped across the room in that final ugly blowout. I stashed my knapsack in a locker down at the bus station earlier. Nothing freaks a Nice Lesbian Bar like when you show up with a big greasy pack and weeks of travel reeking out of your clothes.

So I pose and smoke in my steel-toed, fourteen-hole shitkickers, army pants, favourite jacket with the
Fuck Shit Up!
hand-painted logo on the back, and my fully erect five inch Mohawk. I take cool, sidelong glances at all these shorthaired women waiting, witness to my alienation. They all have proper ID, of course, and most of them look thirty or something, so it's not like they even need it. Not a punk among them. Just yuppie squares. Comatose, clean professionals. Squash-playing, slacks-wearing, martini-drinking Lesbian Zombies. Half dead, desperate for a rush, and they don't even know it.

My feet ache. The line moves at a pretty good clip so I decide it's all right to have a seat on the stoop, just hunker down and stretch out. When I was real young I used to think I could bounce in and out of Nice Lesbian Bars, city to city, find womanly understanding, Lady Love, shelter. One stop shopping.
Mama.
Took me a while to stop looking for it, hoping. I wonder at that strange phenomenon all across North America: universally bad music, overpriced drinks, mean women, and hostile security. Top four reasons why I take my trade to the Nice Lesbian Bars and my party to the dirty, run-down punk bars. Sick truth is, they sense the sham. Forensic evidence of my rage, my violent scorn for every last one of them piles up unstoppable, and it draws the whiny victims forward, moths to the flame.

Someone has to fall for it. Someone always does. Someone just has to want me.

I see one giving me the eye. She's about 5'7", late twenties, trendy blonde-streaked hair, bone-crunchingly thin with a long nose and a small off-centre mouth. She's wearing some straight pleather clubwear, cream-coloured jacket, low-slung pants, heeled sandals. She tucks her car keys in her purse, laughs nervously with her ugly friends, and looks over her shoulder at me.

I give her the spine-tingling, lonely stare-down. Hold her attention for a long minute, then look away. Disdain.

I got a nose for the masochistic type. The rich masochistic type. Perfect for hustlers like me. They usually got a scattered look about them. The kind of woman that only fucks when she's loaded and has secret obsessions even her friends don't know about. An emotional junkie. Loves chaos and conflict 'cause it screws up the chronic order and control she exerts on all material objects in her path. She'll do anything to feed her infinite insecurity, her deeply seated psychic wounds.
Daddy
. The less available you are, the more she'll want you. Especially a no-good, mercenary predator like myself.

When I look back, Blondie's gaping like a trout. All hands dying on deck. I give her a meaningful stare, the shrugging smile.

Her part of the line moves forward. They're the next to be let in.

She says to her friends, “I forgot something in the car. I'll meet you inside, promise.” She bites her lip, fumbles with the keys again and walks this way, peering through her bangs at me. Her friends gesture, make drunken noises, but they turn to go in.

When the door swings open, loud dance music pumps out onto the street all around us. Quasimodo, the braless wonder, looks at me and shakes her head.

Blondie drags her left shoe across the sidewalk a little bit with each step. I hate that. She slows as she nears me, eyes trained on the ground, perfectly unsure. Perfect. I will her to look up when she's closing in and she does. Bingo. My best sad face, my very best down-trodden, hard-on-my–luck expression, complete with slight pouting of the lower lip. Eyes clear, with a slight glimmer of hope.

Needless to say it works like lube in a tight hole. She says, “Hi,” and mentions the imaginary thing she forgot in the car. I offer to walk her, “beautiful lady alone in the night,” and so on. I light a cigarette, give it to her. She pretends to smoke it. I ask about the city we're in, first time passing through, leaving tomorrow, and my only friend has stood me up. Left me stranded.

This causes her concern. “Where will you sleep?”

“Oh, maybe a park or something. Know any good ones?” I say casually, and flatter her into thinking she might be street savvy enough to know what makes a place good to sleep in or not. Her pulse thrums in her tiny neck. I want to snap it. Her skin is pale, dry. She's carefully made up, you can tell at close range, so that she'll look natural from a distance. Clever.

“Why d'ya cover up your freckles?” I say.

“What?” She laughs self-consciously.

“No, serious. I love freckles. They're sexy.”

She flushes, pleased with the compliment packed carefully in a crate of criticism. I'm on the make. She's sipping juice from a bottle, offers me some, and I swig it back. She's saying something about the juice, but I'm swallowing so I can't hear. She lifts her hand in protest, squawks out loud, but I drain the bottle in one long gulp and toss it away, into the street. I'm taking her for every thing she's got. She giggles.

We get to the car and, whaddayaknow, the “thing” she's looking for isn't there! I say, “How sad I won't get to see this city while I'm here.” She looks at me sideways in that profound, fateful moment when she makes her decision, and voila, we're in her brand-new, candy-apple red Honda Civic hatchback that Daddy gave her. The tinted windows whirl down, the music blares, and we're off. She gives me a tour of her favourite American-owned coffee retailers, the shopping mall where she bought her ridiculous outfit, her hairstylists' shop (“He's really cool and sooo sweet”). She points out the CN Tower with its rotating restaurant in the fat bulge of it, the glass elevators on the side sliding up, sliding down. She claims it's the tallest in the city, in the country, in the world, practically. I shrug.

She rests her hand on my knee at a stoplight. She leans toward me. “You and me, we're going to fuck tonight.”

I smile wide and the knot inside tightens. I say, “Is that so?” and she nods her head yes. She's got that terrible smugness about her, like the way cowards ego-bloat when they're high on cocaine. She tells me I'm hot.

Someone honks. The light is already green, and she stalls the car. More honks. Her tires squeal. She drives nervously, hopping from one lane to another, making bad decisions, going nowhere.

She speeds up to make a yellow light then slams on the breaks, sliding us halfway into the intersection, and I think I might not even get a chance to kill this bitch, she might do us both in first!

“Smoke?” I offer her a joint. She refuses, saying she usually likes coke or speed or crystal meth or like any club drug, really, but definitely not pot 'cause it makes her all … “Paranoid?” I say quietly.

“Um, yeah. I guess.” She asks, “Wanna see the lake?” and I say, “Sure, why not. I like nature. Water.”

Her hand is back on my thigh now, she's scratching at me with her long manicured nails. She says, “Just looking at you gets me wet,” and I think, how original, you stupid, boring broad. She says something about some fantasy on the beach. The one where a stranger takes her down and frees her from herself; she lets loose, wild and dirty, leaves her endless petty hang-ups behind.

I'm thinking how easy it'd be to stash her body, take the car, hit the highway. And then she's swinging sharply to the left, careening across three lanes of traffic, narrowly making it to the onramp for a decrepit express lane going in a completely different direction.

“You seem a little wired,” I say, clutching my seatbelt, snapping it into place, knocking her hand off of me.

“Yeah,” she hiccups. “The pills I took are kinda kicking in.”

She laughs; there's a maniacal twinge to her face now, and it looks eerie in the silver lights along the highway.

I lick my lips. “Why don't we pull over right now?” I say, like I've said to a million other creeps who have driven me around. “Ever done it on the side of the road?”

She giggles. She's undoing her shirt buttons, steering one-handed. I look out the window and can't read any signs. The letters are blurred. I squint. Doesn't help. I can't read a single word in print. I have no idea where we're headed and I feel woozy. Weird. I open the window a crack because it's hot, and everything's too close. I want out. Wish I had convinced her to ditch the car. We're speeding along even faster, it seems, although cars are honking, passing on the left. Lights blur. She turns up the music. Electronic, trancey, house shit. It starts to make sense to me, for once.

A car pulls up and keeps pace beside us. Dudes are hanging out the back windows yelling “Show us your dyke tits!” She laughs and shakes her shirt the rest of the way undone. They scream and honk, peel past us, and when they drive away I can see two bare asses in their back window.

We hit gravel and she jerks the wheel sharply. We're back on the road.

“Hey,” I say.

Numbness spreads through my limbs. I take deep breaths; the sensation matures, becomes solid in my chest. It beats outward with each pumping thrust of my heart valve, fast and furious. My skin is hot; it is paper igniting. It is kindling. It crackles. Flames leap to my fingertips as they trace a delicate dance around my cheeks, down my neck, back to my mouth. I'm so thirsty.

“Waaater?” I say thickly.

She produces a sparkly bottle; her smile wavers crooked like Charlie Brown's T-shirt. The bottle is blue and light and cool and so out of reach. The car seats are miles apart now. I can't move my arm, but somehow the bottle is there, in my hand. I can't feel it. Liquid splooshes out the top, shocks my face, runs down my shirt. The tip of my tongue taps around on skin, sucks up the coveted drops.

So thirsty. My large tongue, ungainly in my mouth.

She laughs and bounces in her seat, mouth open, singing along all party-circuit mode, like she's in one of those fucking car ads.

I try to say something, yell. Nothing comes out. There's a low sound (a bear?) growling (me?). I want her to stop this, stop the car, pull over, and end it.

She faces me, head swivels on her skeletron neck, says, “The Juice, it was in the Juice,” and her face chainsaws apart into huge mawing gaps. “Liquid K for me'n'all my friends.”

I pull the seatbelt, but can't move. Trapped. Only my eyes work. I pinprick gaze a falling star, a million miles away, one that I will never reach. My hand rests immobile on my pocket, in my lap. I close my eyes. Fireworks trail inside the lids, red lines spiral and drip, invade the velvet deep. I open them and things are much, much worse.

The truck is upon us, blasting the horn. The driver is screaming, waving his hands, and Blondie is smiling, hands up, eyes closed, head back like she's about to come. I'm thinking, shit, now I'll never make any money tonight. Metal grid pounds into the Civic's hood, grinds slow motion through the crumpled car, legs buckle and cramp, the ripping sound fills my ears. I'm looking down into my lap at one hand. My other hand is still on the armrest, and it is an acrobat, flying through the air at a tremendous speed, far away from me.

There is the suddenness. The explosion. There is brightness and lightness, the dull roaring rage that consumes me. There's the smooth black pebble in my pocket, from my homeland.

In Circles

Aurelia T. Evans

He did not run out or slam the door or shout at her. There was the snick of the door latch and then she could hear his Chevy rumble out of the parking space. Her apartment smelled of Alfredo sauce, cat dander, and the detergent he used on his dress shirts. He left his wine glass on the coffee table next to his Blackberry. She would have to mail it to him. He would not want to come back.

Her breathing seemed loud and her skin warm as she pulled the open sides of her blouse over her breasts. Reaching down, she pulled her panties up over her thighs and rescued her jeans from the armchair. She tried to be as calm as possible as she brought their wine glasses to the sink. Their bases rattled together, and she almost dropped one. She rinsed them out and put them on the counter. Still holding her jeans over her left elbow, she padded down the hall to her room. The ivory sheets were turned down. She threw her jeans into the laundry basket and went into the bathroom for her pills. Her fingers struggled with the childproof lid before she could finally get the bottle open. She took out one tiny pill and swallowed it dry. Her face contorted against its sharp bitterness, and she caught the contortion in the mirror, seeing the person that Daniel left.

“Plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst, but Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom.” These were the words that wooed her. He whispered them again in her ear tonight, knowing how she liked it. Whispered them with every pearly button he slid out of its hole as he kissed down her sternum to the valley between her breasts. She did not wear a bra.