Penny Dreadful

  Adore swung at him again and he tried stupidly to catch or block the flashing antenna with his left hand. Now his fingers were bleeding and he took two quick steps forward, striking Adore in the nose with the heel of his right hand and she went down, the nose likely broken. Phineas kicked her in the stomach, not terribly hard but hard enough to be sure that she stayed down, then turned to Eve and hesitated to touch her, for she was so white and her face was stretched like a drum and running with sweat.

  Eve, he said. Oh, fuck.

  Theseus leaned on one elbow, sipping a pale yellow drink from a martini glass. He was relatively serene, gazing at the stage with gross indifference until Ray Fine chose to interrupt the program. Theseus shrugged and looked away, scanning the crowd. He left his unfinished drink at the bar and sauntered into a throng of bodies. Angry. He was fucking angry and soon came to the rug of triangles and flowers and crouched to mutter furiously in Major Tom’s ear.

  Do you know that man? he said.

  Major Tom turned, wary. Then smiled the smile of a lotus eater.

  Phineas slipped one hand between Eve’s thighs and belly, fumbled for one agonizing moment then managed to release the clasp and slip the first hoop from around her legs.

  The metal surprised him, slipping so easily over her wet flesh.

  He straightened her legs carefully, gently. He removed the second hoop and rolled her onto her back, checked her pulse. Eve was breathing but she was shaking, she was in shock. Phineas rubbed her arms and legs for a long moment, hoping to restore circulation. All the while he was talking to himself, to her. It didn’t matter what he said to her. Anything, anything. He wrapped her in Ray Fine’s wool jacket and carried her to the edge of the stage and stood there for a moment, the floor lights throwing shadows across his bloody face and he realized that he couldn’t jump down while holding her, that he might drop her and so he laid her down and now the crowd began to grumble. Phineas jumped to the floor and faced them.

  Who has a car, he said. Who has a fucking car.

  There was no response and he picked up a wrought iron chair and hurled it into the dark with the crash and clatter of iron against wood and a fleshy thud as it struck a body. A car, he said. Come on. Who has a car?

  Crumb came from the shadows, his hands held out wide as if to show that he was unarmed.

  Take it easy, he said. I have a car.

  Dear Jude.

  You can say what you like about me. I have a tender fascination for the obvious and I’m slow to process violent stimuli but I tend to think that men are much softer than women, more sentimental. They cry at the movies and pretend not to. The male of the species is weak. He doesn’t tolerate pain well, he is quick to break down under interrogation.

  And while two mostly naked women spanking each other under bright lights sounds like a good idea the reality is something else.

  Perhaps if they had been strangers. Then I could have shut down, I could have relaxed properly. I could have tolerated open flesh wounds and crushed feet and eyes burned with bleach. I could have imagined fucking them, hurting them. I could have been shamed and abused to the point of massive and paralyzing despair.

  And I suppose this is what the torturer meant, when she said I was the victim. Because while Eve was visibly suffering it was I who cried out first.

  Funny because I remember something you said to me once. That I had an unfortunate tendency to fall in love with the victims. And you were right.

  But who am I in love with now? Eve, do you think?

  By the way. I am not a particularly stupid man, right? But when it comes to literary theory and existential philosophy, well. I am stupid. I’m thick. Crumb had to give me the lowdown on a lot of that protean theory in Ulysses. The business of realism is a favorite topic of his but you have to be careful with Crumb. If he’s had too much to drink he can easily chew your ear off about the Greeks. And according to Crumb, Aristotle had it all figured out two thousand years ago. The universe, the big nasty. Human existence. God and consciousness and death. The serious shit. Aristotle was on top of it all and his Poetics and Ethics were like very detailed instruction manuals that the average human is too fucking stupid or lazy to sit down and read.

  Yeah. When Crumb gets going in that vein, he doesn’t smoke cigarettes. He’s so worked up he eats them.

  You never met Crumb, did you. He patched me together after you relieved me of my kidney. Wait, that’s not true. They took care of that at the hospital. He made sure I wasn’t dying, though. And he gave me the first shot of morphine, which I suppose made things that much easier for you. He’s a friend and I don’t have many.

  A friend is like anything else. A dog, a plant. You ignore them and they tend to die on you.

  Chrome:

  Not quite conscious.

  The taste of aluminum and a slow downward spiral. He was close to Elvis, too close. Floating like a scrap of wood in high water. The floating was a trick, an illusion. Loss of blood and so on. He was in fact being carried and dragged along by Mingus and a female Breather whose name he could not remember at the moment. His toes dragged and he wished he could lift them, raise them up. For the dragging sensation caused his teeth to ache. Where. Where were they going. He might have asked this. But there was no answer. The pace began to slow and he wondered distantly if he was heavy. No, surely he was not. Chrome was slender, so slender. He was a reed and he took pride in his narrow waist.

  Headlights. The grumble of a motor.

  Slam of a car door. Mingus speaking softly to someone, someone else.

  Horizontal now and soft tissue under his head. The female’s thighs. His head must have been cushioned in her lap but he could smell nothing but his own blood. Hum of rubber on wet pavement. This was the backseat of a car, a hired taxi. Fingers in his hair. The female. Hospital. They were taking him to a hospital and he believed this was not a good idea. Dangerous. He was shot, gun shot. And the hospital was the very very last place he should go, even if dying. The police would find him.

  Mingus, he said. Mingus.

  The little dwarf’s worried face soon loomed into view and Chrome realized he had been unaware that his eyes were even open. He had mistaken the black vinyl seat before him for the inside of his head.

  Hush, said Mingus. You have lost a lot of blood.

  Don’t, he said. Don’t take me to the hospital.

  You need a doctor.

  The police will kill me.

  Christian, said Mingus. I’m not sure if I can deal with this.

  He groaned. Then stop the car and let me out.

  No, said the female. We can take him to my house.

  Who is that?

  It’s Dizzy.

  Yes. Take me to Dizzy’s house.

  You’re dying.

  Then I can fucking well die there.

  Dark skies and bitter relief to be outside again. The air was wet and if I opened my mouth I could soothe the tongue. Eve had stopped shaking pretty much but had not said a word and I wondered if this was pain or shame or what. She couldn’t be that injured, could she. Those joined hoops had been like something out of the Inquisition, though. And the thing about torture was that the victim always confessed or died.

  Always.

  They didn’t put you on the rack for a day and a half and then decide you were innocent. Eve wasn’t guilty of anything but she might well have suffered internal damage. Those hoops were evil. The way her nose was bleeding had scared the shit out of me and I was sure she might have had a blood vessel or two burst in her brain. On the other hand, I have a fucked-up imagination and an irrational but profound fear of embolisms and brain tumors and maybe I was projecting.

  And I was still flying high with adrenaline.

  My mouth was bleeding pretty freely where the dominator had cut me with her metal whip and it struck me that I would probably need stitches. I would have a handsome faceful of thread and it was too bad I couldn’t pass that little problem off on Ray Fine.

  Truly. What else
was an alterego good for.

  Eve relaxed her arms now and moved her head, brushing my cheek with her lips.

  Put me down, Phineas.

  Are you sure?

  I’m not hurt, she said.

  I put her down and she stood there, barefoot on the wet sidewalk. She fastened the buttons of Ray Fine’s wool jacket up to the throat and suddenly she looked about fourteen. Thin white legs and bruised, angry face. The sleeves were too long for her and she used them to wipe the blood from her nose. I lit a cigarette and gave it to her.

  Thanks, she said. And I’m sorry about your jacket.

  Don’t be, I said.

  She crouched down on the curb and smoked hungrily.

  Hey, she said. How are you? We haven’t really gotten a chance to talk.

  Yeah. I’m fine.

  How was Mexico?

  Eve, I said.

  Did you get to see a bullfight? she said. I’ve always wanted to see one.

  You’re in shock, I said.

  But I think I would cry when the bull was killed.

  Eve, I said.

  It’s cruel, don’t you think?

  Do you want me to call you Goo? I said.

  She choked back a laugh or sob and I thought, here it comes. The embolism.

  No, she said. Please don’t.

  I sat beside her and she passed me the cigarette.

  I’m out of it now, she said. I’m out of the game.

  Oh, I said. How do you know?

  Because that was me up there. That was Eve.

  Yes, I said.

  What are we waiting for? she said.

  Crumb, I said. Crumb went to get his car.

  Who? she said.

  And before I could remind her that she had known Crumb for years, that she used to work for him for God’s sake, I saw the headlights of Crumb’s car, a rusted yellow Rambler with what sounded like a rotten muffler. The car choked out an angry cloud of black exhaust and I found it disturbing to think that this ugly piece of metal had probably rolled off the line a few years before Eve was born.

  Crumb didn’t get out of the car. He just sat there, revving the engine.

  I smiled and my mouth felt white with pain.

  The Rambler would probably die if Crumb took his foot off the gas. Oh, this would be a fantastic ride. Crumb was notorious for getting lost and I was still confused by the madman’s map of Denver that Griffin had spawned in my head. The car had a wide bench seat in front so the three of us could ride cozily. Eve slid into the middle, tugging at the jacket to cover the white triangle of her underpants. Now she turned to Crumb and looked at him for a moment.

  But you’re Gulliver, she said.

  Crumb sighed. Yes.

  I didn’t like this at all. Eve seemed to know who she was, and who I was. But she was still so entangled in the game that she didn’t know Crumb from Gulliver.

  Do you know where you are? I said.

  Denver, she said with a trace of disgust.

  Meanwhile, Crumb put the car into gear and we lurched forward. He found the Rolling Stones on the radio: “19th Nervous Breakdown.” It was appropriate, I suppose. Though it generally alarms me when life has a soundtrack. I tried to relax and let the street outside become a blur. After a few minutes I turned to Eve and whispered, do you know Jimmy Sky?

  No, she said. I don’t mingle with the Freds.

  Then how do you know he’s a Fred?

  Where am I going? said Crumb.

  Don’t know, I said. Eve’s place, I suppose.

  No, she said.

  You need some clothes.

  My place is slipping, she said. It’s not safe.

  Ah, said Crumb. The slip. Very nasty.

  Shut up, I said.

  He’s right, said Eve.

  Two minutes ago you said you were out of the game.

  Eve stared at me. That doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

  Oh, fuck. Will you please listen to yourself?

  By the way, said Crumb. Your face is a mess, boy.

  I touched my mouth. I know. It feels like hamburger.

  Then let’s go down to the shop. I can sew that up and we’ll all have a cup of tea and a nice talk.

  Jimmy Sky:

  He was back, baby. He was back.

  Jimmy Sky walked around and around the house, stomping on rosebushes and cursing the thorns. He was looking for easy access. It was such a cute little house, very Victorian and all that and he would hate to break a window. But that was not to say that he wouldn’t.

  Now.

  Jimmy was well aware that Theseus was giving him some sort of happy fuck-around. On one level, anyway. But there wasn’t much he could do about it just yet. He wanted to find this Mariner, what was his name again. Aluminum foil or magnesium boy or ironhead. He chuckled. Chrome, it was Chrome. And according to Theseus, the kid was taking tongues from cops who were dizzy and fucked from the Pale and leaving them dead and somehow, his fictional friend Ray Fine was the prime suspect. And that made Jimmy fucking grumpy.

  Theseus. He would deal with that fancy boy later.

  Okay. His feet were muddy and he was pretty well sick of walking around this house so he ambled up the back steps and used his formidable girth to huff and puff and kick down the door. It wasn’t so easy. It took three tries and on the second he found himself flat on his ass.

  But the door was only wood, and wood splinters in the end. It gives.

  Jimmy Sky crashed through and found himself in a kitchen. Flicked on a light and commenced to explore. A lot of knives in here. He opened the fridge and found a leftover carton of moo goo gai pan, barely touched. Excellent. He grabbed a fork and walked into the living room, shoveling the stuff into his wide gob.

  Nice fucking place.

  The Breather who was said to live here was obviously thick with silver.

  Jimmy stomped upstairs and took a cursory look in each of the bedrooms, his eyes peeled for human shadows. Everything was fine and white and fairy-tale clean and he was sorely tempted to take a long yellow piss on one of the sheepskin rugs but then couldn’t be bothered. He couldn’t be fucked.

  However. He did need to pee and of course whenever he found himself alone in a stranger’s house, one of Jimmy’s favorite tasks was to find the nearest bathroom and root through the medicine cabinet for prescription drugs. But then he supposed everyone was this way. He shrugged and soon located the bathroom. Thankfully emptied his bladder and polished off the moo goo gai pan as he did so. Jimmy sighed to see it go and tossed the empty carton into a wastebasket, then hurriedly washed his hands. He opened the medicine cabinet and whistled at its contents. He had found the mother lode, hadn’t he? And the little Breather who lived here was mad as could be.

  Decisions.

  Well, now. There were plenty of vitamins and expensive herbal smart-pills and a wild rainbow of antidepressants that didn’t much interest him. But there were also quite a few muscle relaxers and painkillers and amphetamines that were exactly to his taste, and he thought a couple of Demerol tabs would go down nicely with a diet pill or two. He rolled four or five pills around in his mouth as he walked back down the hall because he always preferred to taste whatever he was consuming and so he favored the dry swallow. But now his mouth seemed to be full of chalk and his tongue was a bitter ashen lump so he rapidly steered himself back to the kitchen and took a pitcher of what he incorrectly assumed to be lemonade from the fridge and had a big unfortunate gulp of the stuff.

  Grapefruit juice.

  Which might as well be poison, in his book. And not only did it burn his sore gums and torture his glottis, but the juice did not integrate well with the moo goo gai pan and before he could say howdy doody Jimmy Sky was vomiting all over his shirt. And what a fucking mess. His shirt was foul beyond belief and he was standing in partially chewed noodles and bits of gray matter that upon closer inspection were not necessarily meat nor vegetable and to top it off, the pills he had just taken were gleaming like tiny extra buttons down his chest
.

  Now then.

  He could have gone back to the bathroom and gotten a few more tabs of the Demerol but these little guys on his shirtfront were hardly dissolved and what was the difference anyway. Waste not, yeah. Jimmy Sky plucked the little buttons between thumb and ring finger and swallowed rather more carefully this time, washing his mouth out with water from the kitchen sink.

  And he paused, thoughtful.

  Jimmy Sky was a practical man. But this sort of behavior, the consumption of partially digested pills, that was pure Moon. Ah, well.

  Bang.

  Metal against metal.

  Bang, bang and his ears perked up like an old dog’s. That sounded a lot like the front gate.

  The back room of the Witch’s Teat.

  The whorehouse décor and somber lighting. The whistling kettle. The peculiar smells. I found it familiar and terribly sad at once. Crumb peddled inexpensive sex toys, used records and relatively legitimate drug paraphernalia out the front door, and in the back room wielded his untrained medical skills on the mad souls who wanted or needed to avoid regular hospitals. Crumb was no butcher, and he would rarely reach for a scalpel when drunk. But his education was spotty. His run at college had been disastrous, from what I could gather, and irrelevant besides. Crumb had been a theology major. He had picked up a little medicine while working in a tattoo parlor, and later was apprenticed to a back-alley abortionist for a year or two. And beyond that, Crumb was self-taught. He subscribed to the New England Journal of Medicine and he kept an expensive video library of the medical dramas on TV. He swore by St. Elsewhere and complained that Quincy, while entertaining, was medically unsound. Quincy was a menace, he said. Crumb read every textbook he could get hold of and had faithfully practiced his surgical skills on rubber dummies, dead dogs and a few comatose friends. His specialty was extractions: bullets and other foreign objects, bad teeth, unwanted fetuses. Crumb could remove things from the body. And he was pretty good with a needle and thread. I had come to him quite a few times over the years, with minor lacerations and other flesh wounds that I might not have wanted to report to the department.

  Crumb had acquired a dentist’s chair in the year or so since I last needed his services. It faced the television and gleamed darkly in a corner by the sink. There was a Batman cartoon on the box, the sound muted. I stared at the screen for a moment, my brain clicking. It was so obvious, and kind of sad. But all superheroes had pretty much the same problem. Batman was flash and sexy compared to Bruce Wayne and even Robin the Boy Wonder was a lot cooler than Dick Grayson. As for Superman, well. It was a fucking miracle that Clark Kent had never committed suicide. I glanced at Eve, who was pacing around the little room as if she couldn’t stay and she couldn’t go. Obsessively twirling one finger in her hair, around and around.