Lust Demented (11 page)

“No. I don’t know. Monika’s dead. Percy’s dead. Lars’s dead. Books are ruined. Lives are ruined. You don’t even care about your daughter. I understand how Missy felt. She must have found out. Everyone is just a pawn in your grand strategy to make writing worth something in a time when it’s worthless. In a time when everyone can write their own stories. We don’t need writers anymore. We don’t need you.”

“I made you need me.”

“You did you bastard you did.” Kiko stretched both her arms out in a martyr’s stance grabbing an encyclopedic hardcover from each wall. Howling with anguish, she clapped both books together on my head. It was all adrenaline. My brain rattled as I dropped to kiss a familiar floor.

I couldn’t believe how angry the truth made her. Kiko went ballistic. Books rained down on me as she emptied the bookshelves. I got flashes of Percy’s corpse. He was long removed, but I was his chalk outline. Gritting her teeth, Kiko jabbed her bony knee, pinning me where my repugnant idol finally made sense of it all. I didn’t take it serious enough while I still had a chance. The beating didn’t stop. Her anger turned the lights out.

“Da-da. Da-da.” It was a voice I’ve never heard before. Just hanging in the air. The words lifted me up. I looked down at her. My daughter. Could she look like that? Was she even that old already?

“Y
OU
KNOW
F
ARROW I HAVE
a confession of my own to make.” Kiko was on her knees caressing my face. I was lying flat on the floor of the sauna in the same spot I saw the lioness. Beside us, Kuroneko was digging up the floorboards. Her eyes had a luminous clutch as she manipulated the crowbar seeping rapture.

“Keep it to yourself.”

“Hawaii’s not dead. She vaporized same as Missy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m blackmailing Hawaii. She doesn’t know it’s me, but I’m blackmailing her.”

“Huh? Wait… what?”

“Everyone has something private that if exposed will ruin them. It didn’t take long to figure out the ghost in Hawaii’s closet. I charged her weekly installments. I did it all through Kuroneko. She’s not my birth mother. She sponsored me for a visa and helped me out when I first came to New York. She needs money to keep the sauna up and running. I am forever indebted to her, so I took an interest in it.”

“Hawaii didn’t resist?”

“I didn’t even think she’d make the first payment, but she just kept on paying. I wasn’t sure how she got the money. I could only guess that she was taking it from Percy. Somehow she was shaking him down for much more than I was taking. Hawaii and Percy both thought Monika was behind this. I had Kuroneko drop hints to help them figure it out. For some reason, I was invisible to them. I’d be lying if I didn’t realize this from the beginning. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t use this to my advantage. Farrow I’m starting to fall for you and I’ve already hurt you so much. You can never love me after what I did. How will you be able to love me now that you know the truth?” The sound of the sewer water boiling was faint and recognizable.

A giant monogrammed Louis Vuitton duffle bag led to the stench of a million or so in cash that was stashed away dreaming with the rats and roaches. Kuroneko stared at Kiko hoping she could psychically guide her mind to a more narcissistic scheme.

H
OPPING
ONTO THE MOPED, KURONEKO
pulled up the back of her reformatory school skirt to flash me a little fur.

“Forget something?” I tied and twisted the leather strap of the overloaded bag around my arm several times, settling in behind her.

“Don’t worry Farrow I won’t be the only naked pussy on the road.” The bike kicked as we blasted out of the alley, her skirt fluttering up and down, teasing the cars beside us with the powder white lines of her thighs. From what I understood the plan was to wave the money in front of Hawaii’s nose until she gave up Missy’s location. Nobody said much about it. It was hard to believe the girls would risk losing that kind of money, but Kiko was calling the shots and by some crazy fortune: I fell into her palm

Streaks of reckless acceleration through the sunshower, Kuroneko took her hands from the handlebars one at a time, grabbing mine, and sliding them below her skirt. Her hips were familiar territory.

“Hold my purse. Don’t let go.” Kuroneko slid a little, repositioning and I squeezed tight enough to make her body jerk.

“Find some honesty in the world you created.” Kuroneko leaned back on me as Queensboro Plaza closed in on us.

“If money was my thing…” Rusty limbs on the scratch paper sky.

“If money was your thing you could take off running.”

“But I won’t.”

“And that’s why I suspect you’re a slow runner.”

“Farrow something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“I mean with my body. I can’t stop coming.” Missy was crying and laughing at the same time. “It feels good, but I’m scared. I’m scared to feel so good.”

Voodoo drums in the rainforest, the wheels were still spinning when I hopped off the moped. I could hear Kuroneko quickly pull over and drop the bike. I didn’t look back, but an image of her stressed out greedy face cracked me up as I sprinted up the stairs leading to the elevated station. The crowd got thick in the tunnel bridge. No room to run. Kuroneko blatantly tugged at the bag like a gypsy pickpocket in front of a tour bus. We moved prehistoric, mostly with shoulders and hips. Way beyond the imagination of the everyday suckers caught up in their daily struggle, they were all getting smacked with a million in cash without knowing it.

S
KYLINE
AT OUR BACKS, THE
platform was shaking. All the trains were coming in at the same time. The sun cut through our eyelids. I didn’t realize until I bent over…

Missy fainted here. Smashed her skull on the concrete with a hollow thud. She had a slight seizure. Blood ran from her head like a kicked over bucket of red paint. I begged for someone to get an ambulance. In the back I knew every answer to the paramedics questions. At the emergency room I got the third degree. They assumed I knocked her out. I waited in the lobby for six hours. They finally let me see her, minutes before she was released. She was talking on the phone to somebody. I didn’t know she had her phone with her. I tried calling it several times from the waiting room, but just got the voicemail.

“I’ll try Percy. I’ll try.” She whispered in a soft voice that I pretended not to hear.

“Money Farrow. Money.” I followed the pasty legs up to the short shorts until I was damn sure it was Hawaii.

“This is my little girl we’re talking about.” I was screaming at Hawaii. Studying her neck to know just where I would place my thumbs, if it came to that.

“Chill Farrow chill.” Kuroneko patted down her face with a handkerchief, trying not to let the sweat mix with the thin layer of powder. Everyone else around us tried not to act shocked, but it was bothering them. Like it or not, we were packed together. The exhausted workers in their dirty clothes scrunched up at the sound of a man lashing a woman in broad daylight. The words “money” and “little girl” hung in the air. A spray that everyone could understand. A mist that transforms a situation into a disaster. A grumbling that elevates a disaster into a tragedy. A hoard of rats started rising from the tracks. They seemed bothered. Like they knew something we didn’t. Just as the family dog can smell the storm before the first drop hits.

“Farrow I’m sorry. Farrow I know.”

“What do you know?”

Kuroneko took off running. Of course she did. Hawaii went next. And I was standing there staring at the faces of strangers as the possibilities faded. Fuck that, like hell I was.

S
CREAMS
OF AWE AND HORROR,
Kuroneko’s feet hit the open tracks completely blowing minds. She ran so hard with her skirt stuck up in the back, ass exposed, pushing her body to the limit like an angel-dusted thoroughbred. The crazy powder white mare with the black mane took the curve towards Astoria trying to make it to 39
^th
Ave before the next N or Q to Manhattan. It was a fucked up gamble.

Kill the brain. I wanted to throw up a lifetime of meals when my feet hit the stilted tracks. Mandatory perfection found its infancy. Every step of the sprint had to bless the slats. I heard Hawaii’s voice yell back, “Farrow focus.”

Kuroneko already made her way around the curve leaving the plaza. Northern turned into 31
^st
Street. It was a straight shot to the next station. A few blocks away.

“Faster.” Hawaii panted, frozen with fear. Another train heading into the city chugged dead into us. It was rare to get two so close back to back. It just wasn’t our day.

Anyone could turn spider for the right price. First in line to get smacked, Kuroneko chanced it dangling her body over the street as the train passed. Demonically possessed she prepared herself to drop in Lucifer’s palm. The sight of her exposed caused the nauseating heights to grab hold of me.

Smell the sparks, the conductor hit the brakes. Somehow Hawaii was now in front of me, scrunched up, holding her hand outstretched as if trying to block a bright light from her eyes. She pivoted back at me with a look of regret, panting, frozen with fear.

“It was me.” Mangled, Hawaii’s face lost its form as the squealing steel burst in with remorseless momentum. Splashed by an exploding balloon of blood. The train came to a halt. Inches. Milliseconds. I could stick my tongue out and lick it.

“
It’s alright Farrow. Whenever I lose something, it’s impossible for me to believe I’d truly get it back. I’m cool with it. Once something’s gone. It’s gone.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. Missy…Missy…”

Close enough to see over the border to the afterlife, Kuroneko methodically pulled her body back on the tracks. Unscathed, she didn’t have time to think about what just happened, hustling off to the next station. Awe struck as I watched her pull herself up onto the platform at 39
^th
Avenue. The reckless cat calmly adjusted the bag of cash on her shoulder, walking off down the street as if she just picked up a bag of Sunday bagels.

“D
ON’T
LET HER GET AWAY.”
My words were muffled. Detective Anderson was wiping Hawaii’s blood off my face with my own shirt. The heavy summer air stuck to my bare chest. I felt covered in omnipotent honey. Stuck in a beehive with the bees stinging everyone, but me. They knew I was watching. They liked it that way.

“You live in a fucking dream world Farrow. I’m going get your head checked out. Cunt dropped like a penny from the Empire State Building.” Sgt. Bethany Powers flew up in my face.

“More like a silver dollar. Monsters always leave a big mess.” Detective Anderson kicked back filling out the tag team.

“I’m sorry about Hawaii. Had nothing against her, but maybe you did?”

“I thought you guys know everything.”

“We know Missy’s in mainland China and she didn’t leave with a baby. Crossed the border on her lonesome, under the name Eun Young.”

“Wait what... no baby?” Detective Anderson’s words hit me as a decaying hum.

Smoke through her nose. Cigarette dangling from her mouth. Missy was always destroying pages. I shouldn’t have left them around to curl up and turn to ash.

“You don’t want me to finish.”

“You can’t finish. Everything you start blossoms into life, then slowly gets sick.” It was a few straight weeks of insults. It wasn’t like this in the beginning. My girlfriend was fucking another man to help get my book published and she was the one that was insecure. There was nothing to do, but ignore her and that of course was why the snakes rolled around in their pit biting at the air.

“Seoul. Farrow, don’t tell me you never thought about it.”

“Missy overstayed her visa by six years. What did you expect to run into her sunning in Sheep’s Meadow?”

Another woman’s arms were around me. Sgt. Bethany Powers’ eyes blasted lasers. Adelora’s opals deflected them into the crooked cop’s screw face.

“Officers please give me a moment with my client, Mr. Faro.” Adelora wrapped me up in her serenity, leading me away.

“Watch out Chica. Guy’s born under a bad sign.” Sgt. Bethany Powers unsnapped the cover on her holster and anxiously resnapped it several times.

“We’re bored of him already.” Detective Anderson touched his tongue to his upper lip, eyeing Adelora.

Adelora shook the envelope in her hands. She was having a conversation with herself inside her own head. Both Anderson’s and Powers’ eyes weighed down on us as we walked away. Soon enough their feet would most likely follow their eyes. The tracks overhead started shaking again. The first trains since the accident approached the plaza. Adelora glanced back to see if they were still behind us. I could tell by her face that they were. She seemed to go over it a little longer.

“You know I was sitting at home with this envelope in my hands and all I could think of was my father. What it would be like if we didn’t meet for the first time at his gravestone.” Adelora nonchalantly slid through an opening in the fence and hopped down onto an embankment dropping steeply into the Sunnyside Yards. I followed in the same fashion beachkids jump from the boardwalk, hit the sand, and race to the sea.

“I always dreamed that my dad would bring me to the circus. I dreamed he would walk across the tightrope with me.” Rocks and overgrown weeds, we walked down a lonely abandoned rail line caught in the tangle of dozens others that were ready for action. We didn’t have to look back to remember our abandoned overgrown shadows.