The Altonevers (35 page)

“
It always gets me, a good
piece of flesh. The masterful chef and his...knives,” the salacious
woman says to the man, biting her lip while lightly and gyrating in
her seat, and rubbing her thighs together so he can see her bare
legs, “with his hands, sweating in the sweltering heat of the
kitchen for hours on end,” she says.

“
So hot,” the usually suave
man says, who's now sweating like a pig and loosening the tie from
his neck. The women seems to struggle to light a
cigarette.

“
Here I'll get that for ya
doll.”

Flick, flick…

“
Thank you”, she says,
leaning in to press her bust toward his gaze.

“
Pink flesh dripping with
their own juices, searing over a roaring hot flame,” the vixen
says, while moving her hands down to her waist line. The man
watches with quivering lips and assumptive eyes, anticipation as
though he’s about to discover gold, she opens her legs as her
fingers sink past her hips.

“
It always get me
so...aroused,” she whispers, opening her legs wider and lifting her
right knee over the edge of the table. The man is drooling with
dropped jaw as she slips her hands under the table, out of the
man’s view. The voluptuous woman takes a deep breath of her slender
cigarette and lifts her knee higher than the table.

“
Show me, hehehe let me
see, hehehe,” the man says like an eager child waiting for a
birthday present.

“
I'll show you everything,
love,” the vixen says while blowing the man a kiss of smoke. She
leans back slowly, arching her back in a way that accentuates her
breasts. The enfeebled man leans forward from his chair to see
where her hand is touching.

Pop! pop! pop! sings a sub-machine
pistol strapped to her right thigh. The bullets splash through the
man’s chest, throat and face, pushing him back and to the left,
dropping him dead to the table then the ground. The girl stands
completely untroubled, actually seeming to be a bit
annoyed.

“
Oh my god, that took
forever to shoot. Imbeciles!” she shouts, though the room hasn’t
even noticed she'd just killed a man, they're all still hypnotized
by the brightly hued big blue movie star eyed seductress strutting
easily out of the dull dim cold room. Leaving one dead and the rest
stiff as though pillars of salt petrified in perpetual
infatuation.

“
That’s Daisy, our ride,”
Cider says, already getting up to follow.

“
Her?” Anna asks. He knows
that gorgeous woman she thinks, then is immediately jealous of her
being close to him.

“
Wait,” she says, and Daisy
pops her head through the door saying “Hurry up honey, it’s cold as
hell out here” through chattering teeth.

“
Honey?” she asks, though
follows Cider and his friend outside to a nineteen fifty eight
powder blue saoutchik, with sleek silver trim sparking brightly,
beaming through the dim of their surroundings.

“
I can't believe you got me
out here in the Drabs. The colors are...horrid,” Daisy
says.

“
Hey I didn’t tell ya to
come out here, didn’t you have to ace that guy,” he
says.

“
Yeah, that hit went out
months ago, wonder why no one took it. It's because it’s repulsive
and frigid out here. The Drabs, we don’t even dump bodies this far
out anymore, you know that?” Daisy says.

“
Well, thanks for the
ride,” he says.

“
Sure Apples. What’re
friends for anyways,” Daisy says, getting in the driver’s seat of
her sleek blue convertible “Well it's good to see you,” she says
slamming her door shut.

“
Yeah you too. It’s been
awhile since I’ve been in Sally,” he says.

“
She's been running good,”
Daisy says.

“
And how’s business? Good I
hope,” he asks.

“
Always good. The auditions
are never ending. A couple more rumbles than usual, you know same
old stuff. The other studios been getting a bit feisty, but our
directors are handling it well enough, and the actors are dying in
vain by the day. Ya know, the usual. The Vaudevs got it under
control,” she says.

“
Sounds good,” he
says.

“
Yeah, better than it
sounds out here...ugh, the Drabs. I'm sure she'll be happy to see
you though,” Daisy says, lightening his face with a sentiment he
doesn’t often feel, that people are missing him.

“
Thanks Daisy,” he
says.

“
So who's the bird? red
hair, not really your type if I remember right. Is she a hostage,”
Daisy asks.

“
Oh no, no, this here is
An, ahh Carrots, and she's with me,” he says patting Anna on the
knee from the front seat.

“
Carrots,” Daisy says to
Cider who’s nodding his head and reaching for Anna’s hand. That she
takes, easing her from the insecurity in him being so close to this
absolutely lubricious woman.

“
Yes Anna, or Carrots and
I'm not the ransom,” she says slightly insulted.

“
I'm sorry honey, we
haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Daisy, supreme starlet of the
silver screen. I thought you were his hostage or something. I
hadn't known him to ever be the type to have a,
partner.”

“
It's okay, it’s nice to
meet you too,” she smiles a photogenic smile to match Daisy’s
beaming expression.

“
You're too pretty for him,
beauty isn't skin deep. You have a nice feel about you. Despite his
doggish habits it seems he may have finally stolen something of
actual value,” Daisy says.

“
Thank you, but I haven’t
been stolen,” she replies smirking at Cider, her bad boy bank
robber who’s looking away blushing. Then drawn back into Daisy's
gaze, which feels like staring into an open field of spring’s
renewing nature.

“
Let’s get going, it's
frigid out here. Jeez, the Drabs,” Daisy spits.

“
Is the engine warm?” he
asks.

“
Should be, and I ran the
heat whole way, and I'll run it until we can see the Brights, at
least,” Daisy says starting the car and burning rubber. Every move
she makes, no matter how subtle evokes an unquenchable lust in any
who see her. She secretes seduction, her pores are sweating a scent
of primal sexuality sweet to the noses of any to smell. The three
are sailing down the two lane highway in her powder blue
convertible Saoutchik, under a blurry blighted yellow sun
incrementally rising in warmth and hue from the ugly grisaille
grays of the Drabs.

“
Ya got me out here. I’m
surprised there’s even solid colors this far out. How in the
spectrum did you get way out here, Where you two coming from
anyway?” Daisy asks.

“
We're just lucky to be out
of the Blanks and past the Bleaks,” Cider says.

“
Yeah, but they can't even
keep their muddied colors between the lines, this is not a place to
be seen. I wouldn’t be caught dead in these...ehh,” Daisy says
shrugging the chill from her shivering shoulders “Drabs,” disgusted
“The set designers out here must be starving.”

Not yet out of the dour dampness of
the drabs, a car tails them closely from behind with the blaring
sirens of the authorities. The three pull over and wait in silence
for the cop to tap on the glass. The cherub faced Daisy rolls down
her window and says,

“
What the hell do you
want?” while ashing her smoke on the officer’s shirt, his knees
buckle with teeth chattering fear.

“
Sorry...I'm er, sorry,
carry on,” the officer says.

“
Don't tell me to carry on,
get lost,” Daisy shouts at him.

“
Sorry, sorry Ms. Daisy,
I...ah I’m a father, I have children, and a wife,” the officer
stammers.

“
Away!” Daisy says waving
the man off without looking at him. She peels off, leaving the
officer on the side of the road in a wave of sand thrown from her
tires, and piss in his pants with hat in his hand.

“
You'd think they’d know
what their bosses car looks like, huh,” she says shaking her
head.

“
Where are we?” Anna
asks.

“
We’ll be there soon,”
Cider says, and she stretches across the back seat, feeling
comfortable and in good company.

They ride for another hour before
leaving achromatism completely in the dust. Now halfway through the
Dims, where the sun is soaking up color and slowly lightening into
a light yellow. Shade by shade becoming more refined, and defining
the curves and contours of the desert with warmer and warmer tones
that bleed into the landscape like dye into cotton. The sky is
lightening, with cobalt blue seeping around the few silver lined
clouds then outward to fill everything bit of above them. The muddy
blue ochre of the slopes warm slowly into a sun bleached beige,
miles later becoming the colors Anna expects to see in a sandy
desert, with its heated and dried air.

“
Where are we?” she
asks.

“
Still in the desert dear,
thought almost of out the Dims,” Daisy says, batting her lashes
rudely to Cider.

“
What?” he says.

“
Not even telling the girl
where she's going. In some sort of trouble I bet, always in some
sorta’ trouble. I bet he drags you into to it.”

“
He does,” she
answers.

“
She has fun,” he
says.

“
That, I’m sure of,” Daisy
says.

“
Why is it so bright? like
an over saturated photo,” she says.

“
Hahahaha,” Daisy laughs
“this haha. This is bright to you Carrots? Ha! We’re still in the
Dims”

“
The Dims,” she
asks.

“
Yeah, were outta the
Drabs, thank god for that, in the Dims and getting close to the
furthest fringes of the Brights,” Daisy says.

“
The Brights, is that
because of the city lights?” she asks.

“
No it’s because everything
is well, brighter, and brighter still. More beautiful than even
me,” The vixen says.

“
It's going to get brighter
than this?” she asks.

“
We’re almost there,” Cider
says. The lemoning sun lifts further from flatness into a perfectly
round sphere splashing heat and light yellow over the now entirely
defined desert surrounding them. The whole scene is rising in tone
and temperature, swelling in saturation, continually tinting and
enriching in color until the reds of the sand are awash in their
own golden erubescence. Contrasting superbly the occasional cactus
overwhelming her eyes with their overbearing viridescence, as the
atmosphere shifts, tinting to ever deepening, brain cooling
blues.
Where ever Anna looks is more
luscious to her sight then the last, she becomes enamored with the
vividness of the scene she's passing through. Keeping her
entranced, unable to blink for so long it stings her eyes when she
eventually does. She’s enthralled by the hues continuing vision
defying intensifying through a greater number of shades than she
even thought were real if she hadn't seen them herself.

Everything becomes so lucidly over
saturated and prismatically pristine, so crisply defined, she
starts to see everything not as things with names, but as shapes
separated by the slightest variance of shade. The scene is
suffocating her sense of sight, making her pupils throb through as
they’re take gasping breaths while choking on the brightening
desert in order to see more of it. The colors are pulsing through
her eyes even when behind the black of her closed eyelids. It's as
though her eye’s have instantly become addicted to the consumption
of the continually enriching hues of everything around her
abounding in heightening beauty. Anything she looks at is glowing
like it's glazed over glinting chrome, as deeper and deeper shades
of cooling cold colors and flaring hot hues gush through her
unblinking eyes. Drowning her perception in a soul saturating sense
of awe, in disbelief of the colors perpetually ripening, a flood of
shades lighter and darker, far more than she can physically
perceive. far surpassing past what she already thought where the
bluest blues a sky that there can ever be, and cacti even greener
than the greenest spring leaf she can imagine.

Wavering just over the scorching
horizon is a blurring prismatic oasis smeared across the sky,
reaching deep into the ether above. Emanating from the eye
blistering raw pigmentation of the panchromatic city between the
sand and the sea. Radiating for miles with such vividness she can
hardly tell if she's awake or lucidly dreaming.

“
Where are we?” Anna
murmurs, now dazed by the sight assaulting pristine scene around
her. Exhausted by the lung drying wind of the bone baking desert,
and it's eye searing rising tonal temperatures. She stares for
minutes, seeing a thousand shades of a single grain of sand held in
her hand. Then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand, then a
million magnificently glistening crystalline earth oranges shining
in her palm. Each time multiplying by orders of magnitude for as
long as she keeps looks, drooling and staring until unbearable and
she escapes it brilliant splintering glints. Cider’s wagging his
tongue, and panting like a dog, too dried out to even light a
smoke.