Hell's Half Acre (17 page)

The waiter returns, scowling. Are you ready to order?

I will have the lamb, says Jude.

Miller nods. The same.

The steak, I say. Medium.

Molly politely orders the chicken, and the waiter goes away. I take a drink of my water and decide to ask for a big glass of gin as soon as the bastard comes back. Jude has not fucked Miller, yet. I pat my psyche down, wondering if I care. Molly is staring at me.

How long have you two been together? she says.

Oh, I say. We’re not really together.

What does that mean?

Yes. What does that mean? says Jude.

Molly leans forward, her elbows on the table. Her mouth is red with wine and falling slightly open and I can just see the tip of her
tongue. Her gray eyes are sharp and I wonder if she ever tortures Miller, if she ever fucks with his mind. I wonder if he ever thrashes awake beside her, his arms wild and twisting in the dark because he is unable to breathe and when he tries to pull her small strong hands away from his throat there’s nothing there, if she then kisses him and tells him that he’s only dreaming. I wonder if he ever wakes in the morning to find her naked and crouched beside him, studying him in the first blue breath of light as if he were not her lover but a strange new insect that crawled into her bed.

We aren’t married, I say.

Molly shrugs. That hardly matters.

I wonder if he ever feels like an insect she may or may not impale on a slab of foam.

And we have been separated for…a while.

Why’d you split up?

You ask a lot of questions.

Does it bother you? says Miller.

Why did we split up? says Jude. I would like to know.

I slouch low in my chair. The three of them are like wolves and it occurs to me that evolution is a funny business. I don’t particularly want to tell the kidney story. It never goes over well and anyway it’s not nice dinner conversation. Paul Newman is getting his ass kicked good and proper. The waiter hovers at the edge of my peripheral vision and I turn to face him with what I hope is a friendly smile.

I would like a large glass of gin, please.

Excellent choice, he says. Would you like that mixed with something?

No. Thank you.

Jude smiles at the waiter, apologetically.

Anything else? he says.

Champagne, says Molly.

The waiter fucks off and I turn to Jude.

What was that?

What, she says.

That look. The look that says my poor stepbrother is retarded.

You are so paranoid.

He wants to change the subject, says Miller.

Paul Newman is digging his own grave in the prison yard and in a minute one of the guards will tell him to fill it again and start over.

Answer the question, says Jude.

I smile at her. I despise couples who fight in public, I say. You know that. But in about two minutes I’m going to politely tell you to shut the fuck up.

I look at Molly and she smiles, as if to encourage me. Molly seems very relaxed and I wonder if she’s not drifting on a private little ocean of prescription tranquilizers. Now the waiter arrives with my gin and I decide he’s not such a bad guy. I have four inches of gin in what looks like an actual jelly jar, a big one. I take a drink and watch as he tries to open the champagne. He looks uneasy, our waiter. His upper lips is damp with sweat. He’s having a spot of trouble with that bottle. The four of us are staring holes through him and I imagine the vibes coming from this table are nasty. After what seems like forever he pops the cork and slithers away and I feel relieved for him.

I raise my jar.

To the truth, says Miller.

Which truth?

Come on. Tell us how it is to live with Jude.

I stare at him. It gets weird sometimes. One day she drags me into a public bathroom and hands me a gun. I ask her what the gun is for
and she tells me to kill the man in the blue suit and meet her outside in five minutes. Then she asks if I want to get a latte.

Miller nods, sympathetic.

And for my birthday one year, she took me to Mexico City for the weekend. What a sick time that was. Our second day in the city, she turned to me on the street and gave me a mask. What is the mask for? I said. Didn’t I tell you? she said. We’re going to rob this bank. And then we’re inside the bank and everybody is freaking out and I don’t know what to do because I never robbed a bank before and I don’t speak Spanish. And then Jude shoots the little blind bank teller because she won’t stop screaming.

What the hell are you babbling about? says Jude.

Huh?

That was a bad dream you had, she says. You were sleeping right next to me. I remember the night you dreamed that.

Well. That is peculiar.

You and I never robbed a bank together, says Jude.

False memory. I got hit in the head a while back.

Interesting, says Miller. The artificial flashback. A feeble attempt by the subconscious to cover something more painful.

I wonder would anyone notice if I went ahead and bit off a chunk of my jelly jar and swallowed it whole. On the wall above us, Paul Newman is a wreck. He’s in worse shape than me, anyway. He’s crawling before the guards like a dog, begging them not to hit him anymore and I think, what we have here is a failure to communicate.

T
WO HOURS LATER WE ARE FLYING ACROSS THE BRIDGE
in a silver Mustang and I am glad it’s not a convertible because sometimes the elements are just too much to bear. Not quite midnight and there is very little traffic. Jude is leaning against me, her head on my shoulder. I don’t think she’s sleeping but I have this funny idea that she is happy, or possibly nervous. But surely she is not nervous because this is what she wants. Molly drives with the cold manic fury of a girl who grew up in a household full of boys. I am tempted to ask her about her childhood but I stop myself. I don’t want to talk to her in front of Jude. There is no music in the car, no conversation. Miller is silent in the passenger seat and I imagine he is contemplating the velvet.

Over the bridge and through the hills. We are going to Miller’s house.

By the by. The remainder of our dinner party passed without relevant incident. Or nearly so. I knocked over a bottle of champagne around the time Paul Newman was shot in the throat, but Jude managed to make the waiter feel so hot and guilty about it that he gave us another
one on the house. None of us got particularly drunk and no one asked me any more difficult questions, and I refrained from demanding another jelly jar of gin. Jude kept trying to talk about the film, but Miller wasn’t having it. He wanted to wait until we got home.

Home.

I was informed over crème brûlée and coffee that Jude and I would be staying with them for the duration of the project. Our things had been transferred from the King James to Miller’s house while we were at dinner and for some reason I imagined a little team of munchkins, ferrying our stuff across the bay on the backs of winged monkeys. This image pleased me and I was about to share it with Jude, but when I turned around I saw something in her face that I didn’t like. Jude looked scared. Jude had obviously not known about this move.

The Mustang glides down the dark driveway. Miller holds the car door open for us and Molly darts ahead to unlock the house. She’s a little too happy, to my mind, and I wonder if it’s the champagne. Jude holds my hand as we go up the steps, then stops and whirls around to kiss me, a long kiss. Her tongue is sweet in my mouth and something is wrong. This is the sort of kiss that resembles love.

What’s the matter? I say.

Nothing.

Uh huh. Why are you being so affectionate?

She jerks her hand away and hisses at me to fuck off, then.

There you go, I say. Doesn’t that feel better?

I wonder if she is feeling guilty about something. Jeremy, perhaps. The meeting for cocktails with Miller that inexplicably lasted a day and a half. It’s always possible that she missed me while I was falsely incarcerated. But somehow I don’t think so.

Inside and the house is warm with soft, rosy light. Jude and I pass through a shadowy entryway that feels very small, as if I should duck my head. Then we come into a large open room, the living room. The furniture is elegant, minimal. Dark wood and leather and red velvet the color of freshly spilled blood. The floors are hardwood. Molly is curled barefoot at one end of the bloody sofa. Her shirt is loose and unbuttoned to the waist, revealing a nearly transparent camisole of white gauze. Molly is small and curvy and probably doesn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds but I notice her breasts are bigger and rounder than Jude’s, who glances at me with a cold little smile. I shrug in response, but I am not stupid. Jude is five foot five. She weighs one hundred twenty pounds and doesn’t have a shred of fat on her body. She has the muscles of a snake. I wrestle with her sometimes and I cannot hold her down. She is too slippery, too fast. Too strong. Her breasts are very small but I have always thought that large ones would only annoy her.

I wonder where Miller is. Jude sits down in a leather chair and slowly pulls off her boots, dropping them to the floor with one distinct crash, then another. I remain standing. There is another armchair, but it is way the hell across the room next to a bay window. I am reluctant to move it and the most logical place for me to sit would be at the other end of the sofa, next to Molly. But I am still conscious of the way I smell and I have a feeling she would promptly put her small white feet in my lap, and she has very nice feet. Jude watches me and I can tell she’s pleased by my confusion. She takes off her leather jacket and tosses it on the floor. The green dress has long tight sleeves and small green buttons all the way down the front and the dress fits her so snugly that I can see the muscles in her arms and stomach. Jude
isn’t wearing a bra and her nipples are pretty much always hard.

Do you want to sit down? says Molly.

I have a headache, actually. I see things that aren’t there.

Molly frowns because this is not really an answer but it’s the best I can give her. I have a headache and I wish I’d not stopped at one glass of gin. If there’s one thing I understand, it’s my own fucked-up biochemistry. I wander over to the bar, where I find a set of beautiful highball glasses. They weigh about two pounds each and it would be easy as falling out of bed to kill somebody with one of them. I find ice and a bottle of Bombay and I feel better already. I wouldn’t mind so much if Molly put her feet in my lap. I have a thing for feet, sometimes. And maybe my sense of smell is out of sorts and this is all a lot of misguided body language but something tells me that Jude or Miller or both of them are setting me up to fall for Molly.

What are you babbling about over there? says Jude.

I ignore her. I pour myself a sensible shot of gin and tell myself to be careful, for once.

Miller comes limping out of the dark carrying a black ceramic tray in both hands, and I remember smashing him in the back with that toilet tank lid, and at the same time I remember him not limping the other day. Apparently, I didn’t damage him so badly as I’d thought, and wonder if he’s faking it for my benefit. He has changed clothes. He has undressed, basically. He now wears old, torn blue jeans and nothing else. Miller is dark and hairless. He has a belly but it looks okay on him. It suits him. He passes very close to me, close enough for me to touch him. On the tray is a stack of papers, a pot of espresso and four small cups, a woman’s antique hand mirror and a big, friendly lump of coke chopped up very fine.

Here we go.

Miller places the tray on a short wooden table at one end of the sofa.

I thought some of you might be tired and I want to talk.

He moves across the room with the maddening ease and comfort of a panther at the zoo. You can see him back there in the shadows but he doesn’t want to come out into the light. He moves back and forth in the dark recesses of his habitat. He’s not hungry and he’s not sleepy and you know he’s conscious of you. He just doesn’t want the humans to look upon him. Miller slowly drags a chair over to the circle, the same chair I was reluctant to move.

I stand by the bar, sipping my gin.

Jude and Molly have moved to crouch beside the tray, whispering and giggling and probably plotting something. I love the way women will become temporary allies, even when they don’t like each other. Jude lights a cigarette. Molly takes it from her fingers and has a puff. Jude pours out four small cups of espresso. Molly gives her back the cigarette, then begins to cut up lines with a small pocketknife that she takes from her pocket. Jude rolls up a bill and gives it to Molly, who bends delicately over the mirror. Her fine blond hair falling over her eyes like silk. Jude moves on her hands and knees to give Miller a cup of espresso. I have never seen her quite like this. Molly does another line, then climbs back onto the sofa with Jude’s cigarette between two fingers.

I stand by the bar, sipping at my gin.

Poe, says Miller. Come and sit down.

I’m okay.

I would rather you sat down, he says. He points at the sofa.

I finish my gin and pour another, smaller shot. I don’t move for two breaths, three. Then I walk across the room. I bend over the tray and touch the coke with the tip of my finger, which I rub slowly over
my teeth. Miller points at the sofa and I sit down. Molly sighs and stretches her suede legs. She puts her white feet in my lap, curved and serene as two porcelain doves. I don’t touch them but look at Jude, who kneels on the floor. Her dress has slipped up nearly to her hips and I can see that she wears tiny yellow underpants. She holds a cup of espresso in both hands. I wonder if she’s carrying a gun or anything. She seems to be armed all the time, lately.

I begin to rub Molly’s feet.

Now, says Miller. I want to talk about
The Velvet
.

Finally.

Jude flashes her eyes at me and I’m not sure if she said this or I did. Miller blows thin blue smoke rings. He drinks his espresso like it’s water but I notice he hasn’t done any coke. I want some, though. I want a nice fat line but I don’t want him to know it.