Kiss Me, Judas

I take the envelope without looking at it and turn to face Detective Moon. He doesn’t smile and I remember something. He was one of the few cops who sent flowers after Lucy died. I hold out my hand and his grip is like a vise.

  It’s good to see you, Moon.

  Wish I could say the same. He touches his upper lip, which is freshly shaved and dotted with sweat.

  I glance around. Where is your shadow?

  That motherfucker, he says. He’s not my partner.

  I’m glad. He was a nasty one.

  You look terrible, says Moon. If you don’t mind. Like a junkie with no friends.

  Thanks.

  You want to talk outside, maybe?

  Yes, I say. Outside is better.

  Let’s grab a bite, then. He is clearly tempted to take me by the sleeve but stops himself. I walk with him into bright and awful sunlight. There is a café next door and I follow him, a few steps behind.

  Moon orders coffee and a Texas omelet. I force another smile and say I will have the same. Moon stirs his coffee for a long time and doesn’t say anything. I wonder if I’m still dreaming and I stare at the fish on his tie as if it will transport me to another place.

  How long have you been out of Fort Logan? he says.

  Only a few days.

  And you checked into the Peacock right away. What was your state of mind?

  How do you mean?

  Were you cured or rehabilitated or anything? Did they noodle with your brain or was it all jigsaws and watercolors and quiet time?

  They diagnosed me with borderline personality. I’m paranoid and antisocial and I have an unusual indifference to violence. They said I don’t believe the rest of the world is real and consequently I don’t trust anyone and I don’t mind hurting people and what else is new? I used to be a cop. That shit is normal. It’s perfectly normal.

  Moon licks his lips and looks around for the waitress.

  They put me on drugs, I say. Lithium and synthetic dopamine inhibitors and god knows what. Some kind of sensory deprivator. But my hands shook all the time and I had insomnia. The drugs made my skin itch and fucked up my vision. I had to stop taking them.

  He nods and loosens his tie.

  Listen, he says. I came by the hospital this morning and was told that you released yourself. The doctors didn’t think that was such a good idea.

  No, it wasn’t. I think I’m dying here.

  Moon smiles. I wanted to apologize about last night.

  And who was the fucker, exactly?

  Lee Harvey Oswald, says Moon. He might as well be. He claims to be with Internal Affairs, right. He comes in the station yesterday and flashes a badge and a pocketful of attitude and nobody says boo. They don’t want any static with IAD and plus, they don’t like you anyway.

  Imagine that. Do you have any aspirin?

  Our food arrives and Moon shovels in a mouthful of steaming eggs with green peppers and bits of meat. He swallows and wipes oil from his chin.

  Yeah, he says. Imagine.

  Moon is a violent eater. I watch him destroy his food for a while.

  Anyway, says Moon. The guy doesn’t smell right. He’s a fucking spook. But he’s somebody, and he’s slick enough to fool a roomful of cops.

  Did he fool you?

  He made me nervous, says Moon.

  The waitress appears from nowhere, her pink dress stained and cut low in the front. The edge of white lace peeks out, brownish from grease and smoke. It does nothing for my appetite. She bends to fill my coffee cup and I look away.

  I talked to the bartender who was working that night, says Moon. He said you were with a girl that looked like a whore but wasn’t. There was something military about her. Like she could kill you as easy as blowing her nose.

  I shrug and poke at my eggs.

  He put her at five foot seven and one hundred twenty-five pounds. White girl with maybe a touch of Asian blood. Black hair with blond streaks and wearing a red dress that didn’t hide much.

  I barely looked at her, I say.

  Did you get a name or anything?

  I shake my head. She put something in my drink. I don’t remember anything.

  You took her upstairs and woke up in the bathtub missing a vital organ.

  It was painful. It was like being born.

  She didn’t say anything that might help us trace her.

  No, she didn’t. She didn’t tell me anything. I gave her two hundred dollars for a half hour and she took my kidney for fun.

  Moon pushes his plate away. Well. She’s probably in London or Tokyo by now and she won’t be back. Organ smuggling is good money, I’m sure.

  I have to go. I have to get out of here.

  Wait, he says. Let’s go for a ride.

  I don’t trust you. I’m sorry.

  Come on, he says. Five minutes.

  I’m not going anywhere with you, Moon.

  Phineas.

  I need some air and I back away from the table. The idea that Jude has left the country is like a thousand pounds of freshly turned earth on my chest.

  I’m sorry, Moon. I will call you if I need anything but I doubt it. And thanks. Thanks for breakfast.

  Salt and gravel and black snow. The sidewalk is flooded by a puddle deep enough to drown a horse. Moon didn’t say a word about my gun. A crosswalk and the sign says walk, don’t walk. It beeps for blind people. I stand against a brick wall and shiver. He could be saving the gun for later. Or maybe my new friend the Blister has it. The light changes again and again, still beeping. My feet are wet and numb. I watch the flow of people until I feel serene.

  five.

  I find the parking garage without difficulty. The kid in the booth is reading a comic book. He asks for my claim ticket. I don’t panic. I’m sure it’s in my wallet and it is. The kid rings me up and says I’m looking at fifty dollars even. Fabulous. I slap a credit card on the counter and I have no idea if it’s still good. I whistle as he runs it through. The card is good. The kid slides me the keys and tells me to have a nice day.

  The car still surprises me. It’s a silver Volkswagen Bug, a convertible. I don’t remember buying it. It seems I picked it up at some point during the lost time. The hours and days I spent underwater. I lost my job and my apartment in early July. The last thing I remember is beating a cab driver half to death during a hailstorm. Then six weeks of consciousness disappeared. And in September I checked myself into the hospital at Fort Logan. I had this car and some clothes and maybe four hundred dollars.

  The Bug is not bad. The body and interior are nicely restored and the engine purrs like a fat cat. The only flaw is the passenger seat; it’s cut or torn and messily patched with duct tape. I climb into the backseat to change clothes. It’s high time I stopped dressing like a cop. I strip down and stop to examine my shirt. I’m leaking a lot of blood and I try not to freak out. I tell myself to get dressed and go see Crumb. If anyone can fix this for me, he can. I dump out a duffel bag looking for clean socks. I find my lucky knife, the tanto. It’s a Japanese fighting knife; the blade is four inches of Damascus steel with a slanted, almost blunt tip. The handle is hammered white chrome. The tanto slides into a wrist sheath that I can wear under my shirt or coat. It’s almost undetectable; I once wore it with a tuxedo. I find one unregistered handgun, a Smith & Wesson I took off a dead pimp. It’s a sexy little gun, a killer’s gun. It’s a lightweight alloy .38 with an enclosed hammer and a hollow grip. I wear it in an ankle holster and I feel better as soon as I put it on.

  My registered weapon was a Browning 9mm; it was surrendered with my badge soon after the accident. They were going to use it against me but I stole it from a rookie cop who was half asleep, working the evidence room on a graveyard shift. And it’s almost funny. I always dreaded the day I might lose my gun, or have it taken from me. The very idea made me feel green. I always thought I would rather chew off my foot than lose my gun. And now I’ve lost it twice. It doesn’t feel quite as bad as the new yawning hole in my belly, but I do want that fucking
gun.

  I don’t want to but I get out the penicillin. I break the protective seal on one vial, then unwrap a hypo. The needle thin and bright. I draw out ten cc’s and look at my arm. Muscle or vein. I can’t decide. I roll the back window down. The muscle seems safer. I do it quickly and promptly throw up.

  A man walks past my car twirling an umbrella. He gives me a funny look and I don’t blame him. I’m still sitting in the backseat. I’m bleeding and naked except for the ankle holster and my shorts. I’m clutching a needle and there’s puke down the side of my car. I dig through my clothes for something inconspicuous that won’t show blood. I find jeans and a black T-shirt. I try to wiggle into the jeans without ripping open my side. I put on steel-toed shoes and leave them unlaced. And my leather coat is so stained I don’t think a little blood will make any difference.

  I open the envelope. It’s scented and my head whirls. The dark smell of musk, of earth. I think of animals in cages, pressed close against each other. The note is from Jude: when I’m depressed I go bowling.

  I roll out of the garage and a long white Lincoln sits across the street, dark windows rolled halfway down. The Blister drinks coffee from a Thermos, steam swirling merrily. I can hear music coming from his radio. He stares right at me, then looks away. After a moment, I see the white car in my rearview mirror, bobbing along like a cheerful little cloud.

  A red light and I find myself staring at the passenger seat. The duct tape doesn’t make sense and I peel it back. The leather is slit open as if by a razor. I reach inside and pull out a brown envelope full of cash. It’s at least three thousand dollars. I’m dumb with nausea and glee. I must have stashed the money in a paranoid funk. I’m pleased by my own cleverness but I shudder to think what else I’m going to find. I take out a thousand and stuff the rest back into the seat.

  I’m sure Crumb will tell me I’m a dead man.

  *

  The Witch’s Teat is a little sex shop downtown. Next door is a coffeehouse that features questionable poetry readings. It’s always dark in the Teat and the music is so loud I feel sick. Drums and horns and venomous distortion. The air itself throbs. A girl sits behind a glass display case of S&M gear. She is perhaps eighteen and bored to death, flipping the pages of a magazine. She wears a black rubber bra and her eyebrows are shaved off. Her shoulders and cheekbones are marked with ornamental scars and burns. I tell her I need to see Crumb and she shrugs; she wiggles her tongue at me and goes back to the magazine. Her tongue is dyed black and my stomach twitches.

  I lean close to her. The magazine is opened to a spread featuring genital piercing.

  Do that again, I say.

  The tongue darts out, black as ink. I try to grab it, to snatch it from the air like a housefly. The tip of her tongue slips from my fingers, warm and velvety.

  She grins at me. I’m Eve.

  Lovely, I say. Where is Crumb?

  She points at a sheer blue curtain, like a veil.

  Through the blue and the terrible horns grow louder. Crumb sits on a stool before a wall of mirrors. He holds a scissors in one hand and a small mirror in the other. He wears a bath towel around his waist. He’s cutting his hair, badly. It looks like a dog got hold of his head and it makes me a little nervous. Crumb ignores me for a moment, then puts down the scissors. He flicks off the music and examines his hair.

  What the fuck was that?

  Sun Ra, he says. Intergalactic death blues.

  A poor choice, I think.

  He laughs. Whatever do you mean?

  Look in the mirror.

  I am looking in the mirror. I’m a handsome bastard.

  I’m sure you are. But your hair is mangled.

  Crumb smiles and puts aside the mirror. He motions for me to sit down. I sink onto a very soft purple sofa and think I might like to close my eyes and die there. Crumb removes the towel and reaches for a pair of pants. It’s so nice to see you, Phineas. I’m afraid you don’t look well.

  Is there anything to drink?

  Tea or gin? he says.

  Both, I think.

  Crumb disappears to boil water. He comes back with a pint of gin. He sits down next to me on the sofa. I take small, careful sips from the bottle and tell him what happened. The kettle begins to whine.

  I think I had better have a look at you, he says.

  Crumb isn’t really a doctor. He does cheap abortions and gunshot wounds and even dental work for the mad and desperate. Crumb reads a lot. He has a closet full of old surgical textbooks and a lot of stolen equipment. And he doesn’t try to fake it. If you come to him with a ruptured bowel or a crushed spine he gives you a cup of tea and sends you to the hospital.

  A half hour passes. I lay naked and ashamed on Crumb’s table, my clothes crumpled and damp beside me. The shame is curious. I didn’t do this to myself. And it could have happened to anyone. Jude was an efficient predator, a cat. I was a mouse with a bad leg.

  What’s the story?

  You are nearly dead. In fact, I’m surprised you are walking.

  Crumb holds a hypo to the light, tapping it for bubbles. I stare at the bubbles until I think I can hear them. But that’s impossible. The noise is my heartbeat.

  I can hear my heart, I say. If I can hear it I must be fine.

  Crumb sighs. Are you listening? he says. The external wound itself is not so bad and there’s no sign of infection thus far. How much of the penicillin did you take?

  Ten cc’s, I say. Straight into the muscle.

  It should be enough, I think. If you’re still alive in ten days you might take another dose. For good measure. As for immediate concerns, your white cell count is very low. You are dehydrated and you have a fever of 102 degrees. You have some bleeding inside. I can’t say what else without opening you up.

  But I feel strong. Almost high.

  Adrenaline and loss of blood, he says. Invigorating but alas, temporary.

  He comes toward me, the hypo pointed like a hideous eleventh finger. I look away.

  Roll over, please.

  The needle stings and I feel warm. A detailed map of Denver dissolves in my head. I’m looking for bowling alleys.

  What should I do?

  Be very careful, says Crumb. Do not fight or fuck anyone. Those stitches could easily tear.

  My face feels strange. I think I must be smiling. Every muscle in my body is like a piece of nylon rope. What kind of shot was that? I speak slowly. The words pass my lips dense and textured as meat.

  A mild speedball. Morphine for the pain. A touch of methamphetamine to give you energy. Do you have any money?

  Money, I say. Oh, yeah. What do I owe you?

  No, he says. This visit was free. But I suggest you pick up what-

  ever drugs you can find on the street. When that shot wears off you will realize how much pain you are in.

  I start to get dressed but Crumb’s face bothers me. He has the expression of someone who wishes the rain would stop.

  My wife had leukemia. Her own blood cells were attacking her. When she was twenty-six a doctor told her she would be lucky to live another year. She had one failed bone marrow transplant; she had a seemingly endless course of chemical therapy. Her fine black hair dropped out, it fell away like dust. She began to collect wigs. She had a grim drawer of phony hair. Glittering blond and impossible red and gunmetal blue. She didn’t want anything that looked like her own short black hair. She rarely let me see her bare skull. She had a few stubborn and lingering strands, gray wisps. She hated them, she said. When she was very weak, she would ask me to bathe her. Heavy silence would fall between us as I washed her failing flesh. She wouldn’t let me touch her head. I would turn away as she raised her skinny arms to pour water over herself. Whenever I stared into her wide black eyes I saw a terrified girl who would never grow old, and for a moment I could feel how it was to be dying. It was heartbreaking and I rarely felt closer to her.

  Lucy’s dead now and the doctors were wrong; she lived to be twenty-nine.

  Eve
glides through the blue curtain. She gives me a cool stare. Her lipstick is silver and I wonder if her pubic hair is shaved to match her eyebrows.

  Crumb, she says. You have a phone call.

  Thank you, dear.

  Crumb reaches for a portable phone and begins to murmur. Eve stands with her pelvis thrust forward. She wears a leather miniskirt slung low across her hips. I’m sure she doesn’t wear underpants. And I doubt she would blink if I asked about her pubic hair.

  Eve, I say. If you were to go bowling, where would you go?

  That’s easy, she says. The Inferno.

  Her belly is smooth and the skin transparent and I’m aware that I’m high as a kite.

  Well. Are you in the mood?

  Am I in the mood?

  To go bowling?

  She grins. Always.

  I can’t help smiling.

  Give me five minutes, she says. And she disappears through the curtain.

  Crumb puts down the phone. I believe she fancies you.

  Does she have a driver’s license?

  Crumb frowns and pours more gin. I’m sure I said that sex in your condition would likely kill you. And definitely so with one such as Eve.

  Oh no, I say. I think I need her to drive.

  Five minutes or five hours later and I haven’t moved. Eve leans close and blows on my face. The scars beneath her eyes are like fallen petals. The effect is lovely. As if she’s been crying and she’s too proud to dry the tears. I notice that she has painted on slim blue eyebrows. There’s no sign of Crumb.

  Hello, I say. I can’t feel my legs.

  Let me help you, she says.

  She pulls me up and now I’m light as a feather. I take a few steps. My muscles are fluid and distant. Eve has changed into boots and jeans and a long leather coat. She still wears the black bra and I crouch down to examine her belly. It appears normal.

  Come on, she says.

  She leads me outside. I’m surprised by the dark and I take deep breaths. The air is cold and thick in my lungs. I spread my arms like wings and close my eyes and I hear a thousand televisions.

  Where is your car? says Eve.

  I don’t know. It’s silver. A silver Bug.