Don't Cry: Stories (11 page)

Thinking he had smiled at her, the bat girl smiled back. Her smile slit open her personality, and out of it tumbled sultry little demons with black curly hair, bright eyes, and naked bottoms. He let himself be distracted. He dropped down into another layer of drunkenness. One of the litde demons hiccoughed and sat down heavily.

That’s when he heard her say Help me. He receded more deeply into drunkenness, and, with a little shock, felt her acutely. She was reaching out to him, but he didn’t know for what. He stepped deeper into himself, into the little swift-moving stream of music that always played inside him, a stream of songs running together with memory. His mother’s smile was there, the one she had smiled when she was young and beautiful and ready to disappear into the dark. Her smile ran together with the smiles of girls he had loved, or tried to. Mother became an old radio song that cascaded into dozens of songs, sweet and cheap, with something real hidden inside each of them Still he heard the call slow and repeated— for help.

He had no ill will toward the girl. On the level that he heard

her, he would’ve been willing to help her. But he had no idea how. He propelled himself back up into his personality and stopped hearing her.

At three in the morning, Angelique had gone home, leaving the girl alone and very drunk. She was sitting on the pavement in the doorway of the vintage-record store at Sanchez and Eighteenth, the one with the silver mirror ball spinning in its window. The mirror ball was full of light from the dimly illuminated store, and out of it flew a horde of ghost lights, skimming dark walls and sleeping windows in a slow, shimmering curve. Secret and tucked away, the girl knelt beneath the curve of light, her hand on the pavement for balance. Her tapered nails and sparkling rings were fascinating against the concrete, which appeared wonderfully porous and soft, as if it had magically absorbed all the softness of the night. She was waiting for the boy to walk by Even if she couldn’t talk to him, she wanted to see him.

It was a sad situation and might’ve been a disastrous one, except for one thing: It had caused the girl’s heart to come open. This had never happened before. Because of the way her soul was hooked into her brain, whenever it had been touched by love, her brain had taken control and overruled her heart. But because of the missing place in her soul, her brain was in too much chaos to control her heart. And so it had come open for the first time. It was as if she had just discovered a hidden door leading to a place inside herself she’d never known to exist. This was a marvelous thing. Of course, she did not experience it that way; because her openness had come for someone who did not want her, she felt it as painful. And yet she made no attempt to close it. Her mind was still strong enough that she could’ve tried, but she didn’t. The stolen piece of

her soul silently compelled her to let it stay open. Her soul did this so that if it got loose, it would have a way back in. And so, without knowing what she was doing or why, the girl obeyed. She was steadfast and loyal, and she did not know it. She thought she was just a lovesick bitch. Because of what she thought, it shamed her to keep her heart open. But she did.

The ragged man approaching her on the street could see all of this from almost a block away. Significant pieces of his soul had been missing for years, and his endless search for them had caused his normal sense of sight to grow an invisible, voracious eye, which tirelessly scanned places most people would not wish to see. He saw her emptiness sucking at everything around it. He saw her open heart, full of feeling and pouring it all out. Emptiness and fullness, pulling in and pouring out with equal and opposite force, gave her an extraordinary psychic discharge more visible to him than the ghost lights. It made him curious. When he got close enough to see her, he was even more curious; she did not look like that kind of person.

Meanwhile, the boy was heading home in a taxi, bat girl in tow. He was in a philosophical mood. She was talking nonsense about art. That was okay with him. Her talk was like a glimmering curtain pulled back to reveal a stage with costumed people on it—and he was one of them. The curtain was moth-eaten and torn at the bottom, but that only made it better. The taxi turned down the mirror-ball street. He interrupted the girl. “Do you know why this is my favorite block in the city?”

She looked out the window, then looked back at him. He could tell she was thinking hard about it. He looked past her out the window; the dancing lights flirted with him and ran away. There were homeless people huddled in the dark storefront. He felt pity, plus curiosity. What was it like for them?

“Oh!” said the girl. “The record store?”

In fact, the ragged man was not homeless. He had a room in a tiny, rotting hotel with a hot plate, a buzzing box refrigerator, and stacks of magazines piled up against a wall. People assumed he was home-less because he stank and was ragged, because he asked for change, and because he was empty like the girl. His soul hadn’t been stolen; he had lost it, gradually, over a period of years. He had lost much more than she had. Unlike hers, his soul had been connected to his heart. Because his heart had been deranged by the loss, he’d tried to call back his soul by opening his mind. It didn’t work, and he had been without so much of his soul for so long that his open mind was like a gaping wound. His openness had made him wise, but it was not a wisdom he could do anything useful with. His mind hurt him all the time, and the constant hurt made him full of pity for everything that hurt. But because his pity came through his mind, it translated as a thought disturbance rather than feeling, and so was hard to express. He stood before the kneeling girl full of sympathy he couldn’t feel and didn’t know how to express.

“Do you want money?” she asked.

“Could you help me out?” He hadn’t known what else to say. Reflexively, he extended his hand.

“Um, hold on.” She opened her purse and pawed through it. Absently, she wondered if the man might rob her. She found her wallet, pulled a dollar from it, and handed it up to him. He took it and paused, as if trying to decide what to do. The circle of whirling lights enclosed them like a spell cast long ago and forgotten, all the force gone out of it but still haunting its spot. He was trying to remember how to talk to girls.

. “That’s all I can give,” she said. “I’m not rich.”

He saw she had no idea what was happening to her. Even if he could talk to her, she would not be able to answer. Sorrow and loneliness roared through him—so much force that came to nothing. He decided to try anyway. “You aren’t what you think,” he said. “I don’t know what I am,” she answered.

You are a sack of things without a sack, he thought, but the thought sped by too fast. “Six farts going off in a bag,” he said. “Broke the bag and fell out.”

She gave a short, nervous laugh. Making a girl laugh—that was good. Grateful for her laughter and wanting very much to help, he decided to show her what was inside him. If you had been looking at him, you would’ve seen him open his coat and stand as if he were sexually exposing himself. But that gesture was symbolic. Hoping that the girl would have eyes to see, he made his coat the cover for his daily self and, in opening it, revealed the disfigurement of his soul. He did it like a leper might stand in mute greeting before another leper. He did it to show understanding and also to warn.

Her personality didn’t see, let alone recognize, what she had been shown; her personality just saw a homeless guy holding his coat open. But beneath her personality, her soul saw what he was showing and shrieked in fear. A block away, the missing piece came awake so suddenly that the other souls trapped in the room with it started and stirred, like restive animals. Do not let that happen, it signaled her. Do something—now! NOW!

At that moment, the boy and his guest walked into his room. Even though the boy was drunk, he was sensitive enough to feel the agitation present there. Not guessing what it was, he mistook it for his own excitement, and he thought he was more attracted to this girl than he was. The girl felt it, too, but, likewise, mistook it for the intensity of the boy himself Within moments, they were stretched out on his bed, kissing. This girl had no intention of revealing her soul. But in the charged atmosphere of the room, she couldn’t hold it back altogether, and it floated to her surface, where he could feel it, just under her skin, delicious and tantalizing. She closed her eyes and arched her neck, and he saw the subtle beauty of her eyebrows, the elegant bone of her nose, the down that covered her face. He felt like he loved her, even though he knew he didn’t.

The ragged man sighed and closed his coat. He thought he saw a flicker of recognition, but she just sat there, staring at him. He tried another approach.

“Why don’t you go home?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Oh,” he said. “A... boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

His memory became a tunnel of girls, and he fell down it. Some of them were shouting angrily, others were indifferent, and some were laughing with happiness and kissing him with warm, live mouths. One was crying because she was pregnant and too young to have a baby. He sighed again. Now here was this one before him, pert and pretty and torn down the middle. Of course this boyfriend had something to do with her predicament, but what

could he do about it? He gave up. “Well,” he said, “don’t wait too long, sweetheart.”

"I won’t,” she said. She watched him walk down the street, hunched as if subtly crippled. There was a drunk scream from the next block over, and she heard it as a refrain: Do something—now! Now! She took her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed the boy’s number.

When he picked up the phone, a dark little silence followed his hello and he knew who it was. “Hello?” he said again. The girl on the bed propped her head up with her hand and looked at him. Wonderful: her deep eyes and her blunt-tipped nose and the sharp angle of her elbow.

“We have to talk,” said the voice from the phone.

At the sound of it, her captive soul unfurled itself again, and a wave of urgency passed through the room.

“It’s four in the morning” he said.

“I know. We need to straighten some things out.”

“Well, we can’t do it now. I have company.” Her soul rolled through the room, crashing like Rip van Winkle’s ninepins. He couldn’t hear it, but his soul, which was getting nervous, roughly and quickly translated it to his mind as Give me back my Golden Arm! “"You treated me like shit!” cried the girl.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I treated you like you treated me.”

She didn’t say anything. She gazed at the new place inside her, longing to enter it with him. She thought, I love you, I love you, I love you.

He sensed the new place, but he didn’t see what it had to do with him. He sighed. “Call me tomorrow and we can talk,” he said. “But right now, I’m busy.” He hung up and the ninepins crashed again as her soul flung its full weight against the prison door inside him. The girl on the bed sat like an alert cat, sensing an invisible war.

“An old girlfriend?” she asked.

“No, just somebody I went out with once.”

Give me back my Golden Arm!

“I hope she’s not a stalker,” he added. He sat on the bed; his guest sat up and watched him intently Deep inside him, deeper than dreams, a drum was beating. It had taken several hours for the girl’s call for help to filter down to the bottom of the boy’s soul; it had just now gone through the prison wall and reached the prisoner inside. He recognized her voice instantly. He rose and gripped the handle of the prison door. With all his strength, he pulled from the inside while the female pushed from the outside. The boy’s inmost foundation began slowly to rock. Debris was loosed. The pit was disturbed.

“Do you want me to go?” asked the tattooed girl.

“No,” he said. He meant it; he didn’t want to be alone.

The girl lay against the storefront door, her open lips pressed against the tiny, hateful phone, her eyes closed, her face knit tight with pain. Day was coming. In the shallow dark, the mirror-ball lights swarmed biliously. Her heart felt swollen and grotesque, as if it were taking over her whole body, including her head. Her mind felt nearly gone. But the ragged man had helped her after all. Because a tiny bit of her had seen what he showed and had the sense to fear it, she made herself stand up. "Don’t wait too

long, sweetheart,” she muttered through her teeth. "Don’t wait too long, sweetheart.” She imitated the ragged man’s voice as she Walked home, hunched in the cold and nearly growling.

The girl from the bar was naked before the boy, as he was before her. She had the turgor of a healthy plant, dense with moisture, so aroused that she was already lost in it. Her soul moved beneath him, luxuriandy turning in her fecundity. The crashing inside him was matched by the hard, socketed joining of their bodies; he pushed from the outside, she from the inside. Deep things were roused and driven toward the surface: Bits of primary matter joined with feeling, memories, and dreams swarmed upward like bats from a dark shaft. The girl beneath him released her own darkness like a wave of perfume. Overwhelmed without knowing why, the boy pressed into her body as if for refuge. She gave it to him, hot and jumping. Her little demon consorts punched their fists in the air and cheered. He let go of everything but the feeling of her body and the sight of her face, her lips parted just enough to show a sliver of teeth. The prison broke. The boy had a sensation of flying as his freed soul shot up and up and up. The boy rolled off the girl, so moved that he nearly passed out. He touched her face with astonished fingers. “Who are you?” he whispered. She smiled. His awe was misplaced, but that scarcely mattered.

Between sleep and wakefulness, he remembered the soul of the girl he’d taken and thrown away; it was like you might suddenly remember something strange that you’d done during a blackout drunk. He got up to look for it, and, to his amazement, bumped into several others before he found it. It was clear what was called for—and yet, as he looked at them, he realized he had grown attached. He had to sit for some moments, just looking at them— Gentleness, Forbearance, Instinct, and Ardor—before he could herd them into the hall and out the door. Perhaps some of them were attached to him, too, for, once outside, instead of dispersing right away, Forbearance and Gentleness clustered at the door, giving off an air of doelike confusion.