The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl (3 page)

Instead, he picked up a napkin and dabbed slowly at his shirt, never taking his eyes from Jane’s, not flinching when she took a step closer and thrust her face close to his. The way he stared at her, Jane might have been an insect—one with a stinger, perhaps, but nothing to worry much about. Marzi was impressed; her own heart was beating in 6/8 time. Jane began to hiss like a teakettle just hitting its boil.

“That’s enough!” Marzi said. “I’m not asking, Jane. I’m telling you.
Leave.
” She hesitated. The next thing she wanted to say wasn’t strictly within her authority, but Hendrix would back her up. “You’re banned from Genius Loci. For life.”

Jane pulled back from Jonathan and looked at Marzi. “For my life, or your life? Because your life . . .” She laughed, a rich, liquid sound. “That’s nearly over now.” Jane lunged at her, fingers hooked and clawlike.

Marzi crouched and brought up her hands defensively. Jane crashed into Marzi’s arms and reached for her throat, trying to strangle her. Marzi knocked Jane’s arms aside, then put both of her own hands flat on Jane’s chest to shove her away.

Marzi’s hands sank into mud up to the wrists, deeper than should have been possible, and she didn’t feel flesh underneath. She tried to pull away, but her hands wouldn’t come loose—if anything, she felt as if her hands were being
pulled in,
absorbed by Jane’s body. Lindsay and Jonathan grabbed Jane’s shoulders and tried to pull her away, but all they got for their trouble were hands full of mud. Jonathan frowned, as if doing a tricky bit of math in his head, and threw a short, vicious punch at Jane’s shoulder. Bits of mud flew off on impact, but Jane didn’t seem to notice at all, grinning into Marzi’s face, her teeth like tiny white tombstones. She reached for Marzi’s throat again.

Fuck,
Marzi thought, and threw herself backward, away from Jane. Her hands still didn’t come free, so she pulled Jane with her, twisting Jane against her hip and smashing her into the table. Jane hit the tabletop and shouted—it sounded more like surprise than pain. Marzi wrenched her hands out of Jane’s chest, then pushed the table over, thankful Hendrix had settled for chaining the tables to the railing rather than bolting them down. The table fell against the railing and Jane rolled off the surface, over the rail, and fell a few feet, landing facedown on the sidewalk.

Jane scrambled to her feet, snarling, face twisted in fury. Marzi picked up Lindsay’s untouched pint of Guinness and threw it, glass and all, into Jane’s face. Jane shrieked and batted the glass away, where it broke on the sidewalk. The beer streaked Jane’s face, and the mud ran, but it didn’t expose her skin—just more, and darker, mud. “I
said,
you’re banned for life,” Marzi said. She picked up a napkin and began to wipe Jane’s mud from her hands.

Jane looked at her for a long moment, then turned her gaze to Jonathan, and to Lindsay, as if marking them. “I’ll be back. The goddess—”

“Shut up!” someone shouted from the deck. A couple of other people took up the catcall, and then everyone was shouting “Piss off!” or “Get lost!” or, funnily, “Go back to the commune, hippie!” Everyone except Marzi, Lindsay, and Jonathan, who looked at one another, bemused. Jane jerked her head around, flinching as the people shouted at her. She got back into her filthy car without another word. The people on the deck began clapping. Someone threw half a muffin at Jane’s car, and it stuck in the mud on the roof, looking like a fine detail in a surrealist painting. Jane drove off, weaving a little in her lane, and took a sharp right onto Sandalwood Street and out of sight.

“Should we call the cops or something?” Jonathan asked.

Marzi hesitated, then shook her head. Talking to cops was a lot of trouble, and they had a way of making her feel guilty, even if she’d done nothing wrong. “I’m not hurt or anything. And I already banned her for life, right? If she comes back, I’ll call them.” She turned to Lindsay. “I guess it’s my turn to buy you a beer now.”

“I could use one,” she said. “Let’s have it inside, though. That way, the crazy people will have to come all the way up the stairs in order to attack us.”

Down in His Boots

Denis Reardon woke in his clean white bed and looked at his smooth ceiling. His jaw hurt from grinding his teeth all night, and he had half-moons in his palms from clenching his fists and digging his fingernails in while he slept. He’d had the same dream he always had, lately: the dream of the machine that grinds.

He sat up in bed, scowling at the alarm clock. It was already two o’clock in the afternoon. Denis had stayed up all night, hoping a disruption in his sleep schedule would knock loose whatever had gotten stuck in his head, the needle in the repetitive groove that made him dream again and again of a smooth chrome machine rolling over the landscape, grinding every obstruction down to glassy nothing . . .

But it hadn’t worked. Nothing had, not even sleeping pills. He had no choice but to live with the dream.

He could not possibly live with the dream.

Denis’s boots were still by the door, still muddy. He’d gone on wearing the filthy boots since Jane died, trying to forget they were dirty, sometimes almost succeeding. To clean the boots would be tantamount to an admission of wrongdoing. Denis Reardon did not have muddy boots. Denis Reardon did not do the sorts of things that
led
to muddy boots.

But he had done such things, and now Jane was dead. He was even—if one interpreted events in a certain light—somewhat responsible for her death. He was certainly responsible for keeping that death a secret.

Denis went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, but his hands shook so badly that he couldn’t fill the pot. He put the heels of his hands against his forehead and breathed slowly in and out nine times. The number nine always seemed to soothe him—counting to it, or repeating actions nine times.

Denis was mildly obsessive compulsive, of course, and knew it—he was neither sheltered nor stupid. He counted, and he found deep comfort in routines, and tiny imperfections distracted him, which was why he kept his apartment so austere. The compulsivity was a point of secret pride for him, in fact: He was
careful,
he was a
perfectionist,
he did things right. He was self-aware. He didn’t—

But he had.

He thought back to the night—just two days before!—when he’d last seen Jane. They hadn’t been on a date in weeks, having broken up after a particularly vicious disagreement over the role of the Dadaists in the development of contemporary art. It was a stupid misunderstanding, really—Jane mistook Denis’s admiration for certain qualities in Duchamp’s and Rauschenberg’s works for a wholehearted endorsement of their artistic philosophies. She should have known better than that, and Denis told her so, and it only went downhill from there. The discussion had gone from the philosophical to the personal, and they’d parted after exchanging heated, or, in Denis’s case, terribly cold, words.

Jane had returned two nights ago bearing a bottle of passable white wine and an apology, wearing a short white dress, thigh-high stockings, and no panties. “I brought a peace offering,” she said, and laughed. “A piece of ass offering, you might say.”

Denis thought puns were the lowest form of humor, but he refrained from saying so, eager to make up—and make out—with Jane.

Jane’s vaguely goddess-related quasi-spiritual posturings gave her a taste for sex in the outdoors, so they took her Datsun hatchback and drove into the hills. Jane took a winding back road and finally parked beside a steep, muddy slope, concealed from the road by a stand of young redwood trees. They spread a blanket on the ground and drank wine from plastic cups, talking together, laughing. Jane had also brought a loaf of French bread and a wedge of brie. Denis picked up the butcher knife and frowned. “You don’t have a bread knife? This is going to destroy the bread.”

“It’s the only knife my housemate had. You know we don’t cook.” She picked up the loaf of bread and tore off a hunk with her hands, offering it to him. “There, is that better?”

After a moment’s hesitation, reassuring himself that Jane’s fingernails were generally quite clean, he took the bread and ate. They made themselves comfortable, sipped wine, and after a while Jane stripped off her dress, reclining on the blanket, wearing nothing but her stockings. She smiled at him fetchingly. Denis admired her body, her smooth, almost entirely unblemished skin, the long lines of her limbs. Jane was not perfect—in his fantasies, Denis coupled with seamless, wrinkle-free women, with flesh more like water than meat, and orgasm came with no spurts or convulsions—but she was the closest he’d ever found.

Denis went down on her, and she made a small sound of pleasure. He’d studied the techniques of cunnilingus since he was a teenager. Erections were unpredictable things, and he never wanted a too-early orgasm or an uncooperative member to keep him from satisfying a sexual partner—it wouldn’t do to have people say he was a bad lover. He’d heard from mutual friends that Jane considered him the best lover she’d ever had, and Denis took pride in that, as well.

Besides, if his mind wandered when he was going down on a woman, it wasn’t obvious—he could let his tongue work on autopilot while he thought about abstract geometries, or the sculptural possibilities inherent in PVC, latex, and Lucite, and his lovers wouldn’t notice, since they couldn’t see the faraway look on his face.

After a while, Jane touched Denis on the top of his head. He looked up, and she smiled devilishly. “I’ve got an idea,” she said, and inclined her head toward the steep slope of the hill. There had been an unseasonable rain shower the week before, triggering a minor mudslide, and raw, still-wet earth glistened at the base of the hill. “Have you ever made love in the mud?” she asked.

“No,” he said, cautiously.

She sat up. “I have, at an arts festival, a few years ago. We painted one another with mud, and then . . .” Another smile. “It was amazing, so cool and sensual—I’ve never felt anything like it, all that squishy goodness against my skin. I felt so connected to the earth, to the natural rhythms of the world—I swear, the goddess moved
through
me that day.”

“It sounds like a breeding ground for infection,” Denis said, mostly to keep himself from making an acid comment about her absurd quasi-paganism.

Jane rolled her eyes, an insufferable habit of hers. “You’re so dramatic. Come on.” She grabbed his hand and stood up, pulling him to his feet. He protested, and she kissed him, putting her talented tongue into his mouth. Her hands went to the buttons on his clothes, and she began stripping and fondling him with gusto.

Denis was astonished. She really wanted him to fuck her in the
mud
. She didn’t know him at all; that, or she was being willfully stupid, choosing to be blind. Much like the way she’d accused him of being a closet Dadaist—anyone who knew Denis at
all
would have recognized the idiocy inherent in such an assertion.

But she
had
come to him and apologized, had made the first gesture of reconciliation. Perhaps she was simply demanding a sacrifice of his in return, as a way of maintaining balance in their relationship. Could she be doing so unconsciously, or was it a deliberate act? Jane was a student of psychology, and should thus recognize her own mechanisms, but Denis knew that not everyone possessed his own degree of self-knowledge.

She stripped off her stockings and led him to the mud, stepping into the patch of wet earth and digging in her toes. Denis thought about putting his feet in there, about the filth that would get in under his toenails where he’d never be able to clean it, and he returned to the blanket. He put on his socks and boots and returned to the mud, knowing he looked ridiculous in just his shoes, preferring that to filthiness.

Jane laughed. “You don’t know what you’re missing. The connection to the earth, the feel of it between your toes; it’s remarkable, it’s like the goddess is singing just to me.”

Denis shook his head.

She held out her arms. “Come on, cowboy. Fuck me with your boots on, then.”

They weren’t cowboy boots, only hiking boots, but Denis appreciated the general sentiment behind her words, and he didn’t correct her.

The mud wasn’t so bad at first, really—it was surprisingly smooth, not rocky as he’d expected, and it
did
feel good against his skin, as long as Jane kept him distracted from the fact that he was, basically, rolling in wet dirt. She drew patterns on his chest, runes and circles and stars. She cajoled him into painting her, and Denis actually became fairly interested in drawing certain patterns on her back. He’d never considered mud as an artistic medium before, for obvious reasons. Finally she demanded that he mount her, and Denis moved to oblige. The mud on his body was drying uncomfortably, starting to itch, and he wanted to get this over with. Jane was on all fours in the mud, looking back at him over her shoulder coyly. Denis knew he could penetrate her and finish in a few thrusts, and tell her later that the whole mud-covered experience had gotten him so hot he couldn’t contain himself for a more respectable duration. She’d be more flattered than annoyed, and all would be well.

Just as he entered her, his knees deep in the mud, he saw something come crawling out of the dirt just a foot away from Jane. It was a large beetle, disgusting, caked with mud. Denis could clearly discern the beetle’s antennae. They were filthy.

Denis suddenly realized, deeply and all the way through, that he was in a repulsive situation. This was filth; this was the lowest rung on the ladder of degradation. There were
insects
in the mud, bugs crawling past his knees, crawling over Jane’s hands and feet, spreading filth and disease—which was taking coals to Newcastle in this case, taking silicon to San José, because this was a
sea
of filth, a
citadel
of filth.

His erection wilted, and he withdrew, shuddering.

Jane looked over her shoulder, her expression dangerous and displeased. “What?”

He shook his head and backed out of the mud. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

She stood up, crossing her arms over her breasts. “This is so fucking
typical,
” she spat. “I come to you, swallow my pride, and take you back even though you behaved like a spoiled child, but when I ask you to do something for
me,
to help me connect with the spirit of the earth, to transform our lovemaking into something spiritually significant—oh, no, that’s too much to ask, that’s
imposing
on you.” She stalked toward him, looking lethal as a jungle cat, horribly primal with the mud smeared on her body. The sight of her sparked some deep, almost archetypal terror in Denis—this was Woman, in a dangerous way.

“Fuck
you,
Denis Reardon,” she continued, standing with her feet planted in the mud. “You can
walk
your selfish ass back to town.” She stalked past him.

Denis grabbed her arm, but she wrenched free, shooting him a murderous glare. She stooped and snatched up his clothes, her clothes, and the blanket, running for the car, leaving behind the remains of the bread and cheese, and the knife. Denis had a momentary vision, absolutely clear, of himself snatching up the knife and running her down before she could get in the car. He would drive the blade between her shoulder blades.

He would stab her, nine times, and leave her dead in the mud.

Denis shook it off, shocked at his own thoughts. He was not a murderer, despite occasional bright flashes of temper, and he ran after her without the knife. He grabbed her shoulder, pulling her up short, and tore his clothes away from her grasp. She swung at him with her fist, and he stepped back, having rescued his belongings. “You bitch,” he said, surprised by his own fury. Denis usually kept his anger under better control than this. He thought of stabbing her again, and this time even turned his head and looked at the knife on the ground.

She stood by her open car door. “I hope your dick falls off, Denis. It’s not doing you any good anyway, though I have to admit, I like it better than having you slobber all over my cunt.” She got into her car and started the engine.

A great rumble filled the air, and Denis stumbled. The earth had moved, as if someone had shoved the firmament. An earthquake. Not a big one, but—

The hillside was moving. Already loosened from the recent mudslide, and now jostled by the quake, it began to slide down.

The earth was falling. That shouldn’t happen. The ground should be trustworthy, dependable—something you could count on.

Denis ran away from the slope.

Jane’s car started to back up, but she’d parked on a patch of mud, and the back wheels just spun. Once Denis was a good distance from the hillside, he turned and watched as the mud came down.

The mudslide buried the car completely.

Denis could hear Jane screaming. It was muffled and very far away.
She shouldn’t scream like that,
he thought, shock lending him a comfortable detachment.
She’ll use up all her air.

No one else would hear her, he knew. They were far from any houses, far from anything but occasional passing cars.

Denis had a cell phone in his coat pocket; the coat was draped over his arm. He could call the police, give them directions. They could bring earth-moving equipment, even a crew of men working with shovels and buckets. The car wasn’t buried deeply. The top of the mudslide couldn’t be more than a foot above the roof. Jane could still be saved. She had enough air to last a while. The windows had been closed, and since he could still hear her screaming, he could assume the windows hadn’t been broken by the mudslide. She wasn’t suffocated, or crushed, just . . . entombed.

If she’d gotten into the car with my clothes, she’d be doomed,
he thought.
I wouldn’t have my cell phone.

Denis thought about that for a long while. Her screams went on, more quietly, with longer pauses in between bursts.

Jane was . . . messy. She would be trouble in his life, he knew, even if he took steps to save her. She would not be grateful; being saved by Denis would infuriate and offend her. She would spread stories about him to her friends, ruin his reputation, become a nuisance. Jane was opinionated and loud. He didn’t know what he’d ever seen in her, truly, apart from her modest physical charms.