A Beast Without a Name, page 14
When my quarry crossed in front of my position, I would follow at a distance until he entered the alley to bed down. His routine was consistent. I would wait until I entered the alley to brandish the knife and burst into pursuit, eliciting his flight response while plunging him deeper into the secluded dangers of the darkness between buildings. I would slash at his right hip to keep him to the left and force him to the chain-link fence separating blocks. When he attempted to ascend the fence, I would move for the kill. My confidence had grown with my evolving tactics and merciless prowess.
My eyes narrowed as I saw him exit the shelter a block away and stagger in my direction. It was disgusting that unproductive vagrants could afford chemical diversions. I felt my pulse quicken when he passed in front of me, and I entered into casual pursuit. As expected, he continued to make his way down the street toward his familiar alleyway.
What’s this?
He was walking faster, and his limp was less discernable. I quickened my pace to match. Was he alerted? Was he alarmed? Had I somehow betrayed my intent?
Relax. The night was bitterly cold. He may simply seek to bed down in his trash lair and generate some warmth under the insulation.
He moved more nimbly than I would have expected. I could hardly detect his limp when he turned into the alley. This man may have been a poor selection as a prey item. His age was apparent on his face, but he now appeared to be neither weak nor particularly vulnerable. What to do? Break pursuit and scout more suitable quarry?
No. Take him now. He may be more challenging than my typical target, but he remains incapable of posing a threat to me. I have grown fierce. He would not evade me; he would not survive me.
Was this pride? Had I succumbed to such a base and entirely human weakness?
No. Not pride: PURPOSE. I had marked him to die, and so he must.
My supremacy was in its infancy. Could it afford so significant a setback as a failure to hunt?
With the pursuit moving deeper into the alley, I now struggled to casually match his pace. He ducked sharply around the next corner.
Catch him! KILL HIM NOW!
I heard his feet skidding to a halt as I rounded the corner.
Good! The fence has stopped him! The trap is still working!
He whirled to face me as I entered the kill zone. Something was wrong with his face. The old visage of my intended prey was no longer apparent. A disguise! My muscles tensed to spring as he reached into his coat. A weapon? No, a badge. Now, a badge and a gun.
“Drop the weapon!” he called out. “Lay down on your stomach!” He sounded out of breath and anxious. I would have sworn I could feel his pulse hammering through his arteries from where I crouched several feet away.
My eyes darted frenetically around the alley. I could have run, but I was fatigued by the pursuit. Panting, I gauged the distance between us.
I can make it.
I couldn’t reach him before he fired.
He’ll miss.
Panic could hinder his aim, but I would need to inspire panic through action.
NOW!
I sprang, blade extended, straining to reach his femoral artery before he could fire. Thunder rolled sharply over me as pain ripped through my thigh. I gasped for air, blinking feverishly to clear my vision. My leg was unnaturally hot. I snapped my head up to see him standing over me, fumbling with handcuffs.
SEE? He wants to capture, not kill. He lacks the capacity to kill. He is inferior. I am SUPERIOR. He has to die now!
A deep growl made its way up my throat as I leapt again, hindered by my thigh wound but tantalizingly close now. CRACK! CRACKACKACKACKACKACK! My body lurched, free of my will.
Lances of white-hot pain ripped through my chest, back, and abdomen. My deafened ears could barely make out the ringing of my blade as it dropped from my indifferent fingers to clatter against the pavement.
Was I breathing?
I couldn’t will my chest to expand. Rolling onto my back and gasping for air did little to help. My coughs lay wet and hot across my face and chest.
Blood. I’m dying. How?
I dimly made out feet and legs running all around me. So many officers. This was a trap. Caught in my own trap. Humiliating. They were ahead of me and behind me. They knew.
How?
Each blink was growing longer. They ripped my shirt open to apply bandages.
They were going to save me.
Human pity, so predictable. As they assessed and bandaged my wounds with surprising efficacy, I could not help but smile.
Such irony.
Surfacing out of deep water. Dull, unintelligible voices. Rhythmic beeping. A strong odor of bleach. A hospital.
I remained still, eyes closed, taking stock of my body and my surroundings. My arms were restrained at the wrist, tethered to the rails of my bed. Breathing hurt my chest. I was alive, but weak, and their captive.
“Daniel, I can see that you are awake. Can you speak with me?”
Vanessa. Why would she risk so much to be here? How could she have gotten in? Was she here to free me? Would she be caught? Did she even have a plan? She had gotten this far…
“Daniel, I wanted to be here when you woke up. I know you’re disoriented, and I’m sure you must be in a great deal of pain.”
Casting aside my unsuccessful attempt to pantomime sleep, I resignedly cracked open my eyes to meet hers. The room was painfully bright, but I held her gaze. Beyond her, I spotted bars in the windows.
Prison hospital.
I wanted to weep, to burst forth from my bonds and claw my way out of human custody. I knew I was too weak to escape, and who could predict what would happen to Vanessa in the scrum, even if I could pry my hands from their restraints.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Daniel. This isn’t the end of your story. You are still young; you’re still alive.”
I gulped against a laryngeal prominence that seemed to have doubled in size. “I don’t belong here. I must fulfill my purpose…we shared a purpose,” I croaked in a voice that had undoubtedly gone unused for days.
She tilted her head toward me and smiled meekly.
Pity?
“Things don’t always go the way we plan. You really are a sweet boy. You’ll be safe here. They will keep you out of trouble and get you the help you need.”
Why was she was patronizing me?
“I do not require help, Vanessa. What I require is freedom. You heard my reasoning. You agreed with my assertions. How—”
“Daniel, I agree that the human population is probably growing too quickly, and I am aware that you put a lot of thought into your beliefs, but murder was never an appropriate solution. People died. You almost died. You isolated yourself from the world, pitting yourself against everyone in it, all of us. You are a young man, a human, Daniel, and you need to learn how to exist as one.”
She paused, evidently studying the floor with great intent. “You were so obsessed with the changes you felt taking place within yourself, with the evolution of Homo Superior, that you neglected a basic fact.”
Her visage hardened as she exhaled a breath I hadn’t noticed her holding. Standing to leave, she turned her head in my direction once more, and her countenance had changed, her resolute expression softening to pity. “As predators evolve, so must the prey.”
Back to TOC
Rikki Don’t Lose That Number
Richie Narvaez
“Hello. It’s me. It’s Rikki.”
These are the first words, the first time, over a long bridge of years, he has heard this voice from his past. A voice like Miles’s trumpet, all brilliance and brashness, a little sadness, a voice swirling with exotic ports of call, cherry-topped by nicotine. It gives him an instant erection. Almost instant. He is not as young as he used to be. Plus, there are the drugs.
“Oh my God” is all he can think to say at first. “Rikki? Is it really you?” He wants instantly to know where she is, if she’s near. “Are you in town? Tell me you’re in town.”
“For a little while, yeah.”
“We have to get together. We must!”
“That’s why I’m calling.”
Hearing her voice, the years reel in and he remembers himself as a scrawny, scrubby-faced grad student with a permanent erection, especially for his Neoclassical Lit professor’s young wife. The professor liked to host parties at his bungalow overlooking the Hudson. All the lit majors were there, as well as theater, fine arts, music. Rikki stood there that time in the garden, the daffodils rioting at her feet, framed against sunset on the Catskills and the sparkling river. It took him a long time to settle on how he would describe her skin color: he settled on peanut-butter brown. Her hair was a jet-black wavy mess cut in bangs above her eyes. He gravitated toward her not just because she was smoking hot, but also because he had watched her, saw that she took shit from no one. And even when she dismissed his come-ons with brutal condescension, it only urged him onward. And upward.
They talked for three hours as the sun went down. A perfect bubble of time. But when everyone else retired to the fireplace in the den, she moved to go, too.
He grabbed her arm, wrote down the phone number to his parents’ house, where he was living at the time, and begged her not to lose it. She smirked as she took it.
Through the filthy cumulus of memory, he can see her still. She has been on his mind the whole time, through three marriages, through hundreds of groupies, through the orgies. He had moved away, at first by choice. But now, he is back, clearing out his some-people-might-call-it-large parents’ house, both now dead (cancer, heartbreak), and Rikki is back too, from outer space, or may as well have been. What a coincidence, what a stroke of fate.
She tells him to meet her at La Goulue Gallery in an hour and does he know where it is. He says, “Yes, the old bakery. Then we could go out driving—” but she has hung up. Still he smiles, the kind of smile that almost makes half your face fall off. He knows this is destiny, this is kismet.
He makes time to do twenty push-ups, seven and a half crunches, trim his pubic hair, shit, shave, and shower, and then he realizes he is still twenty minutes early. He sits in his brand-new 1999 Taladro Executive Class SUV, listening to Coltrane for thirty minutes more, so as not to look not cool.
La Goulue seems small at first but widens the deeper he enters. Of the artwork, he is not impressed. A series of pit bulls made of umbrella parts. A vat of neon blue spaghetti. He finds himself in front of a large pen and ink by someone named Motley. It’s of two women reclining, nude and intertwined, called The Babylon Sisters.
“I knew this one would get your attention.”
Ah. There is the voice.
He turns and it’s her, out of the past, looking stunning, looking gorgeous, smelling fucking amazing. It’s oleander, he thinks. Her hair is wild now, and for a second—and he feels bad about thinking this—she seems darker than he remembers, not peanut butter, and her lips seem a little thicker. And had she been taller before? He thought she had been taller. But it has been thirty years, more, and memory is a tricky, dirty thing, besides the painkillers, sleeping pills, antipsychotics, not to mention hallucinogens enjoyed along the way, of course, and those almost daily sessions of electroshock therapy one winter. Or two.
She embraces him, and he is surrounded by the warmth of her skin and whatever arousing oleander perfume she’s got on. Eau de Viagra, feels like. She steps back and looks at him, sees something on his face—disappointment? expectation? craving?—so she leans in and kisses him on the cheek. Wetly. He flushes in joy.
“It’s been so long,” he says. “I always knew you would call. So, are you—?”
“You seem to be doing very well for yourself. I hear your band is recording a greatest hits album.”
“Uh, really just re-recording acoustic versions of our back catalog.”
“How great for you. Everyone’s doing that nowadays.”
“Are they? It pays the bills, you know. But you, Rikki, you look absolutely stunning.” He is about to ask if she remembers “Slow Hand Row” when she grabs his arm and spins him around.
“There is a man approaching us with a big red beard,” she says. “Do me a favor, whatever I say. Just go along with it. It’s a business thing. I’ll explain later. Over drinks.” He is about to object but he likes the way she is grabbing his arm. He can feel her long nails digging in and it warms his crotch like a sun spreading across a rickety porch.
A large bald man with a ferociously notice-worthy red beard inserts himself between them. “Rikki! There you are!”
“Major!”
They air kiss, and she says, “This is Jay, and this is The Babylon Sisters I’ve been telling you so much about.”
Major ignores Jay and looks at the pen and ink. “Magnificent. Erotic. I find Motley’s work can be called ‘art’ without implying an insult.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” Jay says.
“Oh, yes, yes, I’ve heard your name,” Major says, with a chuckle. “I’d recognize you anywhere. I loved most of your first album. Very credible work. Very credible.”
“You did? Well, I guess I’m supposed to say ‘Thanks.’”
“My card, sir.”
The card reads “Major Dude” and has a phone number. Jay is not sure what to do with it, so he puts it in his wallet to get it out of his hands.
“So you co-own The Babylon Sisters?” Major says.
Jay’s eyebrows fly up. Rikki gives him a look, so he says, “Well, uh, yeah, I do.”
“Your bona fides speak for themselves,” Major says. “Soon each of us will own a sister, it seems.” He turns to Rikki. “I assume we can proceed with the agreed amount.”
“Major, sorry, no, it’s six now.”
“Six! Hmm, still doable. May we conclude our business immediately?”
Rikki turns to Jay and says, “I’m so sorry I have to leave, but I really have to finish this deal. I promised.”
“That’s okay.”
“Let’s meet for drinks tonight. Eight o’clock. At my hotel. I’m at the at the Beekman Arms.”
He stands there, with the warmth of her skin and the scent of her still clinging to him like a new pair of leather pants. Tonight it is, then.
His dead parents’ room is spacious and clean, but he cannot sleep there. Not because it smells a little like death and a truckload of Ben Gay. But because it still feels like an intrusion. Instead he has been sleeping in his old bedroom.
It would have been nice if, like in some movie or sitcom, his parents preserved his old room the same way he left it so long ago. That would have been sentimental and kind of sad, but he could deal with that. Or if they had done the eighty-is-the-new-seventy thing and retrofitted his room into a home gym. That would have been charming in an “aren’t old people hilarious?” way. But no, when he first opened the door it looked as if, in fits and spurts, they put some of his stuff into boxes, moved in old lawn furniture, broken lamps, and four cat litter boxes. He squeezed past those and found his old bed, dusty, soft as Jell-O pudding. On it were old toys, his Howdy Doody record player, his Space Patrol car in its original box, a Pet Rock, none of which he remembers owning, but which he must have. He tossed them on the floor at first, but they are now placed neatly on his old toy chest.
He is fetal on his old bed. He considers taking a Valium to relax. But it doesn’t go well with his other pills and he doesn’t want to get groggy.
He thinks about Rikki, about the curves of her gypsy body, the way she smelled. He smells his upper arms where she hugged him to see if he can still catch a whiff.
The doorbell rings.
He squeezes past a pair of moldy Adirondack chairs and is downstairs before he realizes he forgot his pants. He considers running back up, but instead he grabs a dusty throw from the couch and wraps it around his waist like a fleece sari.
The two men at the door introduce themselves as Detective Ramirez and Detective Massoud. They say they know who he is and just want to ask a few questions.
“I guess O’Hara and Hannigan have the day off,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
One of the cops says, “I’m a really big fan—I loved your guys’ second album. The first side is amazing.”
Jay winced. “What about the second side?”
“Yeah, I don’t know what you were trying to do there. But I admire that you guys tried.”
“Well, I’m going to say ‘Thanks.’”
In the living room, they show him a picture of Rikki. It’s an old picture, black and white, blurry, from way back then.
“You were seen talking to this woman today,” one of them says. Jay is not sure if this is Ramirez or Massoud.
“She’s a friend. A good friend. So what? What’s the rumpus, as they say?”
“I guess they still say that. Can you tell us what you talked about?”
“She told me she loved our second album. All of it.”
“Please. This is important.”
He crosses his arm in front of him, and it occurs to him that this is the way he used to sit, on this very couch, when his parents wouldn’t let him have extra ice cream. Or was it his first car?
He shrugs. “I can’t tell you anything.”
“Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought you would be. You’re the one who wrote the lyrics, right?”
“What is this? What do you want?”
“Your friend—your ‘good friend’—appeared in town about a few days ago. She’s never been arrested but she’s a suspect in some pretty mean business.”
“What kind of business?”
Ramirez and Massoud or Massoud and Ramirez look at each other and nod. “Swindling millionaires,” one of them says.
“She gets people to invest in artwork she doesn’t own. She has fake papers, gets actors and friends to pretend to be part owners, so that the dupes feel it’s okay to invest. Get it?”
