It’s freaking me out.
Relax, said Griffin. Drink your martini. Or have another one. I’m buying.
Why are you being so friendly?
Griffin rubbed his naked head, his helmet. He shrugged. The walls of Rob Roy’s were dark red and in that burgundy suit he nearly melted into the background. I could only see his eyes and teeth. The soft glow of his skull.
I sank back into the flexible haze of my own head. Griffin and I had gone to the same college, a shitty state school in Memphis. I didn’t know him then, not really. But I had heard the stories. Griffin had this little girlfriend, a high school dropout. She was seventeen and after she moved out of her mother’s house, Griffin sneaked her into his dorm like she was an illegal pet. He got her pregnant and then went homicidal because she didn’t want to have a baby. Meanwhile, the girl did not have such a good reputation. She was a kleptomaniac, she was suicidal. She was white trash, she would give you a blow job if you bought her a milkshake. And she was illiterate. But this was a lot of bullshit. I met her only once and had liked her right away. The girl was sweet and tough, with the voice of a dead jazz singer. She wanted to be a photographer. Her name was Lisa and she was maybe a little too infatuated with Emily Dickinson, but I could forgive that. She was seventeen, right. Then she had a miscarriage and Griffin lost his mind. He knew she had gotten an abortion, he knew it. And so one night he tried to set her on fire, while she slept. Griffin did six months in jail and because he was only nineteen and his daddy was a powerful man in Memphis, his records were sealed. Lisa changed her name and got a job, an apartment. Then Griffin came out of the county farm on good behavior and started hanging around abortion clinics. He started following girls home. And on a rainy day in late April, he knocked on Lisa’s door. He was smiling the same punishing smile. He wanted to give her something, he said. He offered her a bloody pillowcase that contained the head of a murdered prostitute. The prostitute, he claimed, was a killer of babies. But Lisa never blinked. She was expecting him, she said. Lisa surprised him, she did. She shocked the hell out of him. Lisa produced a gun and shot him and suddenly Griffin wasn’t smiling anymore. There was a hole in his arm the size of a half dollar. Later it was discovered that the pillowcase contained the head of a dressmaker’s dummy. Griffin didn’t press charges and the case was dropped.
And when I met him ten years later, Griffin was a slick young lawyer in Denver, working in the DA’s office. He was arrogant, seductive, ruthless. He was a very good lawyer. I knew he might be a psychopath but what the fuck, right. I struck up a conversation with him anyway. A dark November morning. We were sitting on the courthouse steps, maybe ten feet apart. It was bitterly cold, unpleasantly cold. It was starting to snow. I had come outside to smoke, to get away from the press and the bureau chief and my own lawyer and everything else. Griffin was sitting cross-legged, with an expensive and famously ugly Italian leather coat wrapped around him. He was smoking a cigar. I glanced at his face and saw that he was a little hung over. Maybe a touch of the flu. Anyway, he looked like shit and I didn’t feel much better. I had been testifying on a case that involved cops and the secret assassination of a local heroin king who had pretty much deserved to die, and the trial was dragging along like it would never end. Griffin was working an unrelated case, something to do with animal torture. It was boring him to death.
I said to him, didn’t you go to school in Memphis?
Griffin had smiled. The smile that made me feel queasy. Like I just stepped on something dead, a bird or mouse bloated from the rain and now I couldn’t get its guts off my shoe. But I went out drinking with him that night, and Griffin soon became something for me that every cop needs. Griffin became my ally, my confessor.
Wake the fuck up, said Griffin. Your food is getting cold.
The waiter had come and gone. I looked down. Before me was a wide, metal plate that held the biggest, ugliest lump of meat I had ever seen. Beside it was a deformed brown thing that appeared to be oozing sour cream. I slowly comprehended that this was a baked potato.
Do you have a girlfriend? said Griffin.
What?
Other than the organ thief, I mean.
I ignored him. I poked and prodded at the steak. It was not so bloody at all. In fact, it looked burned.
Your wife is dead, he said. Over a year now.
That’s right.
What’s your story? said Griffin.
No. I don’t have a girlfriend.
Good. Very good.
Why? I said. Why is that good?
Griffin didn’t answer. He ripped into his steak, barely looking up for the next five minutes. I stole another glance at my place and was positive that I couldn’t eat this piece of meat. My teeth felt fragile, just looking at it. I wondered about Eve. She certainly was not my girlfriend but then I wasn’t sure what she was. Whenever I was near her, I felt like I should protect her but such a notion would only make her laugh. She was much more likely to save me, to catch me when I next fall at her feet.
Eve had this dark energy around her, swirling but not quite visible. The ring and shadow of myth. Her voice was ageless. Eve was delicate, childlike. I easily imagined she could be sexy, brutal.
She had the bottomless eyes of someone at war.
Now where the fuck was my brain taking me. I was slipping down the ugly slope of bad poetry. I must be a little dreamy from that funny drink, the Pale.
Because, said Griffin. If you had a girlfriend, you would lose her before tomorrow comes.
How, exactly?
I wonder. Do you believe in ghosts? said Griffin.
What do you mean, like Casper the friendly?
Griffin delicately wiped a drop of reddish grease from his lip.
No, he said. I’m talking about the underworld, the walking dead.
Yeah, well. I see the walking dead every time I look out the window.
Griffin chewed briefly, staring at me. Listen, he said. You motherfucker. I’m not talking about urban despair. I’m serious.
Okay. Have you recently seen a ghost?
No, not exactly. But I have seen things that you won’t believe.
I lit a cigarette and felt cold, thinking of the ghostly creatures I had seen in the torn-down building. Drinking tea and smoking cigarettes on a forgotten Sunday. The Lone Ranger crackling on the radio.
Ghosts. They didn’t have a care in the world.
Try me, I said.
Griffin had finished his whiskey and now he growled at the waiter for another one. He looked weirdly angry, confused. I wondered what in the hell he was up to.
Tonight, he said. I want you to come out with me tonight.
Where are we going?
To the other side of darkness.
What is that. A disco?
That’s a scream, said Griffin. You fucking kill me.
Moon:
Moon was aimless and hungry, driving around with a big emptiness in his stomach. His stomach was positively echoing. He wished he had brought along those doughnuts. But after taking out Wiley’s glass door he had been too embarrassed to go back in and ask for a take-out bag. Almost noon, now. He had sixteen dollars, right. That was enough for a big lunch. Moon had a taste for cow. He wanted a hamburger, a big one. And a milkshake or two. He still hadn’t checked in at the station and he was maybe three hours late for his tour. Hey, fuck it. That’s cool. He had a thousand sick days lined up like little yellow ducks. And there was one of his favorite burger shacks, straight ahead: Millennium Burgers. He shifted around in his seat, wishing the seat belt didn’t have to choke him. There was nowhere to park but that’s why he became a cop, right. Unlimited parking. He rolled the Taurus into a loading zone and detached the offending seat belt. He rubbed his throat briefly, then tossed his sunglasses on the dashboard. The seat belt was still tangled around one thigh and he struggled with it a moment, then clambered violently out of the front seat. The seat belt tripped him though, and he nearly landed on his face. Fucking thing wanted to kill him.
Moon drifted away from the car, muttering. Then turned back. He wondered if he still had that butterfly knife in his glove box. He leaned into the car, his butt hanging into the wind for the world to admire, and dug around until he came up with a knife. It was a big motherfucker, with maybe a seven-inch blade and a shiny brass handle. The blade was tucked within the handle and the handle was supposed to come apart like wings. Hence the name. If he was slick, he could whip the thing out and the handle would flicker apart like a butterfly in flight. But he wasn’t very slick. He couldn’t even remember where he’d got the thing. A shakedown, probably. But one of his buddies might have given it to him, as a gift. Cops generally had a pretty bloodless sense of humor and any one of his pals would have hooted at the thought of him trying to flash that knife without cutting off his own nose. Anyway. He opened the knife carefully now and cut the seat belt loose at both ends. Then stabbed the blade into the driver’s seat cushion, cutting the beast from belly to throat. Yellow stuffing gaped from the wound and Moon felt better. Much better. He pocketed the butterfly and tossed the dead seat belt into a sewer grate, then proceeded to the Millennium, whistling as he walked.
Dear Jude.
Something is very wrong with Griffin, I think.
And this is a guy who’s never been quite right. He came to the house once when Lucy was in the worst days of chemo and we were watching a baseball game, very casual on an otherwise dead Saturday afternoon and Griffin is eating pistachios. He brought over a sack of them and he’s eating them one after the other and tossing the shells into an ashtray and he comes cruising out of the blue and asks Lucy if she’s lost a few pounds. And she’s sitting in the rocking chair with a blanket pulled over her in the middle of fucking summer and a scarf around her head like a turban and he knows perfectly well she’s been sick and he goes on to say that he liked her better with a little meat on her but the way he says it you can’t be sure if he’s a complete psychopath or he’s just living so deep in his own skin that he truly forgot.
I don’t know what was in that drink he gave me but it feels familiar. It feels a little too good and I would have to say it’s in the narcotic family. But a distant relation. Faint. The way ice tastes when it’s been washed in vodka.
Anyway, Griffin paid the tab and instructed me to be at the Paramount around midnight, to catch a swing band called Martha’s Dead.
And just as I began sleepily to contemplate whether Martha was involved in a state of being or ownership in relation to the dead, the grinning bastard kicked me under the table and said hey, maybe you can use that little kidney story to get close to some nice pussy.
You know. Milk the girls for a little sympathy, he said.
I stared at him and now it dawned on me that Griffin didn’t believe me. He didn’t believe a fucking word. It was really too bad that I don’t have a few vacation snapshots of Jude sunbathing on a brick patio in an impossibly small bikini, the sky behind her yellow with Texas dust. Jude smoking a cigarette beside a fountain while tourists swarmed around her. Jude throwing money at a beggar. Jude standing in the ocean, hands white and skeletal at her sides. And one shot of Phineas and Jude together, fondling each other in a café. A sweet old lady from Minneapolis took that one. It was a ridiculous story, after all. It was pure tabloid. And why should I care if anyone believed me or not. I walked out with Griffin into gray sunlight and before he turned to go, Griffin touched my arm.
It was a simple thing, a touch.
Like we were friends, like we didn’t need words between us. Maybe it was true. I tried to remember how things really were before the urine incident but everything was obscured by smoke and drugs and loud music and faces. Disconnected torsos. The memories disengaged and I was watching a movie on a grainy black-and-white television without sound.
Tomorrow, said Griffin. Tomorrow you will understand.
What? What will I understand?
Griffin shrugged. You will live in another world.
He walked away from me with unfailing arrogance, his legs furious and fluid in those slim purple pants. His smooth, round skull floating at his shoulders. I tried to reconcile this image with the smiling, slithering Griffin who had peed on me with impunity. There were but flashes of his previous selves, of the Griffin who decapitated a mannequin and offered the head to his estranged girlfriend. Of the Griffin who improvised wildly in the courtroom, the Griffin who was at once adored and hated by judges.
Moon:
Now that was fucking better. Moon felt a thousand times better. Nothing like a belly full of undigested meat to set him right. And he loved that bread they used for the buns, fresh sourdough rolls that were never exactly round like those creepy processed buns at McDonald’s. Fuck those processed buns. The Millennium buns were properly deformed lumps of bread, often bearing strange tumors. And the Millennium gave a fellow a serious chunk of meat that weighed a quarter of a pound after it was fucking cooked and the fat had dripped away. Then topped with real cheese and fried onions, pickles and jalapeño wedges on the side. Moon had to pass on the waffle fries today. He had been feeling a little bloated of late, and was trying to lay off the starch. But he did soak the burger down with two vanilla shakes. Now he was walking back to the car, laughing at himself a little bit. He had been so hungry that he killed his own seat belt, for fuck’s sake.
Droning down the sidewalk, he was on cruise control and feeling good. He was happy, of all fucking things. The hell was wrong with him. Maybe he would go down to the station and poke around, see if there was anything interesting on the board. Hey, now. What the fuck was this? His foot was stuck in something. A wad of green chewing gum that some sociopath spat on the sidewalk. The gum had melted in the sun and was now smeared nicely along the underside of his shoes. Fucking beautiful. Moon sat down on the curb, muttering. The next time he saw a guy, or a little kid even, spitting his gum on the sidewalk…dead. The offender was fucking dead. Moon finally took the shoe off and scraped at it with the handy butterfly knife. Then he heard voices, loud. Maybe two men and a woman, talking at once.
You stupid, stupid fuck.
Listen listen listen.
Whoa, now. I can’t breathe with you in my ass.
Tommy, Tommy. Let’s go, please.
Moon swiveled around to scope the cracked glass window of a coin-op laundromat. Four or five people were gathered around the change machine, shoving at each other. Okay. This was just what he needed. A random dose of pure foolishness. Moon replaced his sticky shoe and stood up, breathing hard. He walked into the laundromat and everybody froze. He sighed. Did he really look that much like a pig?
What’s the trouble?
Everyone was silent and Moon quickly catalogued them. A skinny Latino girl and her white boyfriend, who had the pale, downcast eyes of bystanders. They were already backing away, as if to say: this really isn’t our problem. In fact, we were just leaving. Moon shrugged and let them go. He turned to the other three. Black male in mid-
thirties, shaved head and nose ring. Wearing blue hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses, black pants and sneakers. He looked angry, sullen. White male in early twenties. Long dirty blond hair and a beard. Filthy bluejeans, no shoes and a torn white T-shirt that read Zippy the Pinhead for President. A small, white female with black hair, braided. Middle twenties and wearing peculiar clothes: soft leather vest that buttoned to the throat, no shirt. Her arms bare and white. She wore a dark red or black skirt, knee-length and made of something like velvet. It was thick and heavy and the colors seemed to shift. A wide belt around her waist, with little beaded pouches dangling from it. Brown leather boots that laced up to her knees. She was staring hard at Moon, as if she knew him. Her eyes were gray as stones, with a touch of blue around the edges.
What’s the trouble? he said again.
The woman smiled but said nothing.
This motherfucker, said the black male. He pointed at the white boy. This dumb cracker is trying to get change out of the machine with a piece of lettuce. I need to dry my clothes for
work but I can’t get some change because of this fool. He’s got a pocketful of lettuce, he’s got a damn salad in his pants and he wants to try every damn piece of lettuce, one after another. How am I supposed to put up with that?
The white kid grinned, scratched himself. He was a picture of bliss. There were indeed several wilted pieces of lettuce at his feet, and another in his left hand.
Well? said Moon.
Yeah, said the white kid. I’m cool. I’m minding my own shit when this person starts invading my space. Fucking up my head, you know.
Right, said Moon.
He stepped up to examine the machine. The dollar slot was slimy with green and black juices and bits of chewed lettuce. It looked pretty well ruined. Maybe not. He pulled out a dollar and tried to feed it into the machine. The machine promptly rejected it. The machine started blinking, like it was maybe going to explode. Moon sighed and wished his armpits would stop dripping for five seconds. He wanted to help somebody, he really did. He probably had a few quarters in his pockets, but he might need them later. He never knew when he might pass a video arcade. He regarded the fucked machine briefly, wondering how much trouble it would be to smash it open. He had a tire iron in the car, but the idea of going out to get it and coming back to pound on this machine for a while made him weary beyond belief. He did have a gun. But that would be a rather extreme solution, even by his standards. He glanced at the woman.
What’s your story? he said.
She shrugged. I’m not involved. But I was curious.
About what?
I wanted to see if the lettuce would work. And I was curious to see which one of these two was going to get stabbed over four quarters.
Nobody’s getting stabbed.
The woman sniffed. I smell blood on somebody.
Okay, said Moon.
What about my money, said the black guy.
The machine seems to be broken, said Moon. It won’t be accepting any regular money today.