The Punany Experience (20 page)

Just then, as before, the blue-eyed boom boy read his mind and answered, “It’s easy if you look at it as art. I have some incredible pieces in my office. Would you like to come inside?” Beyond the door the boom boy held open, he could see a blue light flooding the room and illuminating the mounted image of a man with a bullwhip shoved up his ass. “It’s Mapplethorpe,” he said. “It’s widely respected art, I promise,” young blue eyes said with a fading glimmer of hopefulness as his nemesis stepped into his scene.

“Are you after one of my men again?” Sweet P asked, wrapping her hands around Hartford’s waist from behind.

“Bitch!” the boom boy spat, disappearing to his room with a snap of his finger.

“Hey, let’s get you over to the radio station, before Farrell’s next program starts,” Sweet P said, grabbing her friend by the hand.

“Cool.”

“Hey, do you have some music in mind? He’s really serious about making a splash with Playboy Radio. You should hear the lonely truck drivers who call in.”

“I have some fresh new producers who may have some music that he’d like to throw in rotation. I’m meeting with them this weekend to check out their stuff. Maybe you’d like to come along. I need to make sure their heads are on straight.”

“Sure. You need me to fuck somebody?”

“No, not this time; I just need you to meet me there.”

“I
HATE IT AT
A
UNT BLUE’S HOUSE
,” Raven complained as she packed an overnight bag with two nights of clothing.

“It’s Dream Crow’s house. The whole place, even the animals, are hers. Aunt Blue just lives there,” Alex informed her.

“So what? It stinks.”

“That’s sage.”

“What’s sage?”

“The smell in her house.”

“You mean she makes it smell like that on purpose?”

“I guess. It’s supposed to be for cleaning.”

“She needs to get some bleach for that.”

“Not that kind of cleaning. It’s kind of like to get rid of evil spirits or something.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Maybe you’re an evil spirit,” Alex said, zipping her laptop into its case. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“Maybe you’re stupid,” Raven snapped back at her sister, grabbing her jacket. “I think she’s weird. I don’t like her, or the way her house smells.”

“She probably doesn’t like you either. Let’s go. Your mom is waiting for us.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what to do. Don’t you think I know that
my
mommy is waiting?”

Shawna honked the horn again. She couldn’t wait to get rid of the kids. She had some hot cop ass to get, and those fussy little wenches were moving too slow.

Raven and Alex came out of the house. Alex locked the door and Raven headed down the stairs. From the top of the stairs, the little girl could see her impatient mother in the running SUV, her knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel and revved the engine.

Raven walked deliberately slowly down the stairs. “We’re coming, Mommy!” Alex pushed her to get her to move faster. “Stop before you make me fall down the stairs,” Raven whined.

“Walk faster. You see that she’s waiting.”

“Make me.”

“Why do you still call her ‘Mommy?’ You aren’t three years old anymore, you know.”

“You’re just mad because she’s not your mommy,” Raven said.

“That’s a laugh,” Alex said.

“You’re just mad because your mother’s dead.”

“I hate you.”

When the little girl reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned around and looked at Alex with cold, old eyes. “You should hate yourself. You should hate yourself because you’re weak and stupid, just like your mother was!” Then she turned around and ran to the back door of the SUV, swung the door open, tossed her bag in, and jumped inside, slamming the door behind her. But before she could lock the door, Alex was on her, pulling her hair.

“Take it back! Take it back!” Alex screamed.

“Stop it, Alex!” Shawna said. “Get your hands off of her!”

Alex felt Shawna smacking her head. “Ouch, that hurt,” Alex said, releasing her grip on the younger child.

“Good,” she said, “now you see how it feels to have someone bigger than you hit you.”

“You don’t even know what happened.”

“I don’t need to. Just get in the damn truck. I don’t have time for all this nonsense today.”

“But you don’t know what she said.”

“And I don’t care. Get in the truck,” Shawna said.

Alex tightened her eyes, looking at Raven as if to warn her that there was a whole lot more where that came from. She picked her suitcase up off of the ground and threw it the back seat, hard, landing it smack into the side of Raven’s head.

Raven started to cry. “Mommy, she threw that bag at me.”

When Alex got into the front seat, Shawn back-handed her. “Didn’t I tell you not to touch my child? Don’t start that shit. Not
today. Shut up! Both of you just shut the fuck up!” Shawna revved up the engine of her SUV, turned on the radio, and backed out of the driveway. She was speeding down the hill to the freeway. “I can’t wait to drop you little heifers off! I need a damn break.”

T
HE CROW SISTERS SAT ON THE BACK PORCH
of the Bandarofski estate overlooking the farmland that spread as far as their eyes could see. Dream Crow seemed to have aged quickly after her husband died. Her beautiful light brown eyes had weakened over time and now she needed glasses to see two feet in front of her. She was still a beautiful woman, underneath her sadness, but the zesty excitement that had once made her the bell of every Bandarofski Ball had been buried with her husband. She moved slowly now. She spoke carefully now. She sipped sweet tea while Blue nursed an afternoon Bloody Mary.

Blue had always been an old soul. She had seen more than her share of bad things, and didn’t mind at all that her eyes were clouding over. The doctor had told her it was probably caused by her diabetes, and dehydration. Their mother had been completely blind when she died.

“Sister Blue, do you miss your old life?” Dream Crow asked her.

“Working at the hospital, you mean?”

“Yes. Do you miss it?”

“Sometimes I do,” she answered her sister. “Then again,” she said slowly and thoughtfully, “sometimes I don’t.”

“What do you miss the most?”

“I used to miss caring for people. But now that Jerome’s gone, I have you to care for.”

“What don’t you miss?”

“Well, Dream Crow, you can put it like this, I couldn’t have
been more ready to leave San Francisco General when you called to bring me to L.A. to sing with you. I wasn’t out to be a star or anything, but entertainment was a far cry from all the ugly I saw in the streets of San Francisco. You know, they had me nursing on children who had been beaten and abused and mistreated so badly, Jesus would have jumped off the cross to whip their parents’ asses, and the world be damned.”

“Sister Blue, you’re a mess. Now you know the good Lord wouldn’t do any such thing.”

“For a while, there was a wave of some really weird stuff going on, too,” she continued remembering. “It was like people had gotten hold of some crazy drug that was completely distorting their sense of right and wrong. In a year’s time, I treated at least seven of the same kinds of cases. They were severely malnourished children who had been locked in their rooms and bathrooms for months, sometimes years, at a time. They had lesions, lice, and worms from where they had been left in filth. They smelled from the inside out, like their insides had rotted. You would think people would need to pass a test to have children, just like you have to pass one to drive a car, or to graduate college. That’s why I never thought twice about having children of my own. There’s just too much ugly. Who knows what their husband or wife might do to their children for kicks?”

“Sister Blue, you have to have sex before you have children.”

“Oh, don’t you start in on me now; I’ve had sex.” Blue sipped and stirred the celery stick in her drink to remix the red potion that was beginning to separate in her glass. “Well, I’ve almost had sex; plenty of times.”

The women laughed for a moment, and then Blue became suddenly serious.

“Sex is just plain over-rated. And it’s misused. You should know that better than anyone, Dream Crow.”

There was a moment of somber reflection as they both thought of Seth.

“Sister?”

“Hmm?”

“You know me and Hartford always knew about you and him, right?”

“I realized that Hartford knew. He’d seen us together. I did try to keep it from you, though. How did you know?”

“He told me.”

“Hartford?”

“No, Seth.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Why do you think? So I’d feel all right about replacing you. It was just a few days after you were gone. He was missing you bad. He cried a lot and stayed high. Hartford was worried that if he made Seth leave, the county would come for us, so we let him stay.” Blue sipped her drink and continued to speak. “He wasn’t trying to rape me or anything. He just tried to get me to agree to be with him, is all.”

“Did he ever…”

“Hold your tongue! I wasn’t having it. I told him the only way I would have his dick was in a jar. It wasn’t long before he left on his own.”

“I’m glad he didn’t do anything to you. I never thought he was a bad man. I loved him, as sick as it sounds. Not the way I loved Jerome. It wasn’t pure like that. I loved him for taking care of Momma and making sure we didn’t end up on the street. You know, if it weren’t for Seth, we’d have probably ended up split apart in foster homes. You were too young to remember all the men who were taking advantage of Momma when Daddy died. She was lonely back then. They were taking her money, fucking her, and taking food right out of the refrigerator to take home to their own children.”

“Imagine that,” Blue said. “No, I didn’t know. Did Momma know about the two of you?”

“Not at first. When she figured it out, she just stopped talking.” The sisters were silent for a while, sipping and remembering.

“You want me to make you another drink?” Dream Crow asked.

“No, I’m okay,” Blue said. “I want you to know that even though I didn’t understand it, I never judged you for it. Still, it kind of soured me on the whole idea of sex. Even when I became a woman and finished the nursing program you put me through, I still didn’t want to give myself to anyone. It seemed to me it was more trouble than it was worth. Every last one of my nursing school friends dropped out because they were either pregnant or their man wanted them to take a job, move in, shack up, be in love… Sex was a damn disease in my book.”

“What about love?”

“Love? Ha! What about it? Truth be told, I might’ve been less afraid of the sex than I was of love. Sex is a byproduct of that contagion. Now, if I had been out there like you were for a time, dealing with sex like a business, I might’ve been all right. But with love comes all the rest of the symptoms.”

“You mean butterflies and that nervousness that makes you feel kind of out of control. That’s why I say I didn’t love Seth like I loved Jerome. Jerome made my hands sweat. He made my whole body catch on fire sometimes.”

“That old man?”

“You’d better believe it.”

“It sure will make you hot all right. Hot enough to kill a man,” Blue said.

Dream Crow laughed. “I guess.”

“Did I ever tell you about my VOYA theory?”

“VOYA theory? No, I don’t think so.”

“Love is a virus,” Blue said. “It’s a deceptive virus that works in conjunction with the object of your affection. See? VOYA, Viral Object of Your Affection. When you’re first infected, you don’t know that you’re sick at all. You actually think you’re feeling suddenly great. You have more energy, you’re happier than you had been before, and it’s easier to breathe now that you have VOYA. But what you think has been the antidote to your former condition is actually the venom of a virus that can be fatal if it isn’t treated properly. There’s no cure for it and once it’s inside you, it must run its course.

“Now this is the important part, because your resistance to love and your recovery from the viral infection will depend on the interactions that occur between the virus and you, the host. The host cells are primarily located in the brain and the reproductive area and are carried through the nervous system to the heart, where it is spread throughout your entire body. For women, the symptoms start to show soon after the virus gains entry and binds to vaginal receptors. How quickly it spreads from there may depend on the frequency and intensity of her orgasms, but the virus has been known to spread rapidly; even when no orgasm has occurred. The first indication that the side effects have begun is the patient’s acute inability to recognize logical fallacies, erroneous statements, or to do background checks. Your cerebrospinal fluid, the fluid your brain floats in, has been completely infested with the virus so you feel dreamy and are dazzled and short-sighted, not being able to see further than your VOYA. It’s during this period that most patients begin to form several psychoses such as general ignorance, jealousy, confusion, stupidity, and paranoia. You may experience peevishness, becoming quick to anger, or fight with family and friends who recognize your condition and try to offer advice for treatment of VOYA, or quick to forgive
and excuse your VOYA. Those who survive the infant stages of the viral contagion, especially those with good credit, may suffer from something called Cosignatory. This is the worst side effect that may bring your Credit Cell count down to poverty levels. Some hosts may also get an extreme outbreak of UHaulism, which is not all together bad because it increases the speed at which you are likely to recover, putting VOYA at a closer range for observation.

“Usually the virus begins to dissipate as binding to vaginal receptors ceases. Following this period, a condition called Infidelity sets in. Some of the side effects that will indicate you’re entering the Infidelity phase of VOYA may include, but are not limited to, denial, weight gain, weight loss, skin rashes, loss of hair, insomnia, irrationality, feelings of self-worthlessness, alcoholism, drug use, drunken calling/texting, depression, acts of vandalism, and covert operations. In some cases, hospitalization is necessary. In the worst cases, death occurs.