Lust Demented Part 4

"Say what?"

Rain strafed Cross Bay Boulevard. A dragstrip through the weeds. My face fell onto the back of Kiko's head. She was already unfastening my jeans with her teeth. Giant drops piercing Jamaica Bay. Kisses landing below. Leaning over, her skirt ran up to the very top of her thighs, a.s.s bulging at the sides. The cabbie gazed in the rear view, swerving a little, and looking away. Kiko kept eye contact as she gently pecked at me. Moving with an illusion of love that for the moment I needed to believe in. The s...o...b..ring became louder. I reached into her shirt pulling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s out. We stopped short at a red light. The driver blew us kisses through the rearview. Kiko took me down to the bottom of her throat. The sound of her slight gags made me sink deeper in the weathered seat.

"Who is she?" Hysterical, Missy shook the laptop a few times before flinging it against the wall.

"What's your problem?" I had clean hands, so the accusation disintegrated on impact.

"The girl in your book. I knew I couldn't trust you."

"Which one?"

"Which one? The s.l.u.t that's which one, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. I'll kill you. I'll kill them all. Wh.o.r.es!"

System shocked, I dragged my face out of her hair. Time was advancing. All three of us were waiting for the same thing. Kiko pulled herself to the surface. Her presence was a relief... not as much as an ocean liner into an iceberg... or a concord into the sun... I guess if it was a s.p.a.ce shuttle I would just hope it would keep going. Face painted, her lips were dripping and she wanted me to take a good look before she stuck her tongue down my throat.

Out the side window, a big-rig was having a hard time staying in its lane, skidding and swerving in and out of control. Its trailer painted with circus animals and a vintage logo. Traffic spread at its sides attempting to make room where there was none. Time slowed to a thousand blinking frames.

I felt the sky squint when the big-rig finally rolled over. The ma.s.sive truck slid like a poached grizzly across a frozen river. The entire expressway slammed on their brakes as a reflex. An avalanche swallowed the wolfpack. Whatever didn't smash into solid stone hydroplaned into twisted steel. Metal mangled with flesh.

We were more prey than predators, out in the middle of the L.I.E. with the others. People were holding each other up. I'm running forward with the cabbie, tripping over the injured, not sure what to do. I lost sight of Kiko, but felt her close in a different way. The circus truck was lying on its side burning. There was no sign of life from the driver who was still gripping the wheel. In worse shape was the pa.s.senger who was thrown a couple hundred feet down the black tar path. The trailer in back was busted open and shaking as if the truck was having a final o.r.g.a.s.m of its own.

{XVI}.

GET COMFORTABLE WITH THE INFERNO at your sides. A huge paw emerged first, followed by another. Smoke was pouring from the circus truck. Sparks flying in our minds. The driver in the front seat regained consciousness.

"What the f.u.c.k happened?" A dazed puppet in the human show climbs from the window out onto the expressway. The lion was already out sniffing around. Time moved into ethereal territory. Loose limbs flying in our direction helped get us moving. The lion had four legs which never seemed to hit the ground. Four legs floating. Four legs that didn't belong here in New York. Four legs that belonged to a different jungle. A different jungle with different laws... and dif... or maybe it was the same... maybe it was all the same.

h.e.l.l's poets chanted in my ears. The city's skyline was in the distance. The heavy stench of burning gasoline lingered in my throat, clogging my nose. The cabbie left his robe in the lion's teeth, but he still managed to enter the gates of the hilled cemetery first. He was faster than me. The lion was faster than us all, but seemed to be bouncing around with wracked nerves. It seemed to have no direction. It seemed to understand that the world was at its mercy. Especially this world of soft skin mocking nature.

The lion tore through the cemetery's maze focusing in on no particular target, ripping heads off the stone statues, trampling flowers, bushes, and trees. It was at that moment I lost sight of everything. The land was trails of regal echoes. Heavy footsteps hunting the panic of man. In-between growls and sounds of destruction I heard the cabbie's soft voice calling me.

"In here. In here. In here." I heard the voice, but couldn't find its source. My heart was pounding atomic. The feeble voice was a trickling stream of desperation.

"Nice place to be buried alive." All I could see was the lion's open mouth. It was the first time the giant cat, acknowledged me.

"In here. In here. In here." The cabbie's hand waved at me from the steel grates of a mossy tomb. He found a place to hide. The cabbie was safe and I was exposed. Maybe he wanted to save me or maybe he just didn't want to watch me die. It would be a terrible death for him to know. I would probably feel nothing after the first strike. I was already frozen, not welcoming, but waiting for it.

A muscular soiled man burst from the gates of the tomb waving a rake. He grabbed me with a force I had yet to feel. The lion was just watching us chewing on a gravestone bouquet. It looked like roses. Just then, I noticed the lion had no mane... no c.o.c.k... no b.a.l.l.s. The lion was a lioness wanting nothing more than blood and flesh on her breath.

"Motherf.u.c.ker... motherf.u.c.ker... motherf.u.c.ker..." Wearing only lace panties, a bulletproof vest, and his pistol, the cabbie stayed useless, hyperventilating. Kiko was right: The taxi madame was a cop. I should have realized it the second Sgt. Bethany Powers put me in his car back in Red Hook.

"Trust me this is not a bad place to end up. You guys know who's buried here in Calvary?" The groundskeeper eyed the lioness, trying to control his chattering teeth. "Calvary is a cemetery of cops, crooks, and crazies. Lucchese, Petrosino, not to mention the great Steve Brodie."

"Who...?" The lioness almost seemed to be listening, patiently waiting outside the tomb's cast iron gates.

"My moms named me after the man himself. Steve Brodie, the man who in 1886 jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge and lived. Crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d did it to win a $100 bet. People say it was a con. Over a hundred foot plunge... near impossible to survive even in water... East River is pretty rough as it is... might as well dive off a fifteen story building into asphalt." Brodie kept going. "I mow his grave every day and for some reason... I know without a doubt Steve Brodie was no joke. He really did it. I even figured the calculations to prove myself wrong, but numbers can make too much sense." Brodie produced a sc.r.a.p of paper from his pocket which had a mix of calculus and physics scribbled haphazardly all over it. The cabbie and I both looked down at his calculations. It was serious math as far as I was concerned. I wasn't sure what it proved, but it made my mind go in different directions. I pictured Lars falling in slow motion from the great bridge, a cloud of pages fluttering around him in a literary force field. A cloud not of numbers, but songs to the city.

"There is no greater spiritual victory than the conquer of human logic."

"Who were the two others you spoke of?" The cabbie finally gained control of his breath again, fighting his fear, swallowing equations that weren't there.

"One was a gangster. The other was a gangster of the state." A hawk flew over the cemetery swooping down to get a closer look at the lioness. A little too close, the lioness jumped in the air and the hawk disappeared as fast as it appeared.

"Seeing a hawk is good luck."

{XVII}.

IT WAS AN IMPOSSIBLE DASH. The lioness was on my heels, still prancing around like we were playing. I was Steve Brodie going for the hundred bucks. I was Lars suicide diving anytime he felt the alt.i.tude buzz his brain the wrong way. I was Mikey Farrow writing my next book to be shredded at first sight.

Queens Boulevard had enough moving steel to kill us all. I could have kept going only to let her blindside me and though it made no sense I got holy. On my knees, I dropped in the middle of the four lanes heading to the sacred offices and so special dungeons, but the cars missed and kept missing. The lioness roared. I was shaking. She moved in closer. I stopped shaking. I was kneeling in the middle of the boulevard of death. The pavement consumed my skin. The lioness had me in her clutches. I could only wait to feel her teeth. I didn't have to. Her jaws were open and oh so close. But instead of tearing me open, she licked me. She licked me once. She licked me again. People leaned out their car windows taking pictures and videos with their phones as the lioness went to town with her tongue on my face. She had healing saliva. I was ready for anything, but really one thing in particular. I closed my eyes letting her fill in the blanks for me. I felt the rain coming down as it had yesterday and maybe the day before.

Missy pa.s.sed me on the street, but I was the one that kept walking. She followed me for a block through midtown until I stopped, silently waiting for her to tell whatever she felt the need to tell me.

"I'm sorry, but I need you not to worry about me. When you were with me and working on A Greater Truth, I was jealous of the time you spent away from me. Even if you were in the room with me there was this intense distance. At times you look so sick, stricken with some strange disease that only you had. Other times I was certain it was someone else coming between us. It was so confusing. Every day we lived together, I expected you to tell me that you were finished writing and ready to come back to me, but that day never came... you just kept writing and writing and writing..."

"Farrow... even before you finished the book you deserted me... even before you finished the book you were already talking about the next one and the next one and the one after that. I realized that the book you were writing was as much mine as anyone else's. The book was more mine than yours."

"A Greater Truth..." I didn't know what else to do, so I went for her lips, but she moved away. The women always decides.

I opened my eyes only to look into the eyes of the lioness, twice my size. She looked angry again like she had no choice in the matter. There were only a few more blocks to go. My life as everyone else's in the city was only measured by a few blocks. I wasn't sure whether to sprint or walk home, so I stayed somewhere in-between. The rain blessed the lioness with a slight transparency and mystique. I could see my square brick apartment. I could see my chipped brick landlord waiting at the door, dead drunk, seeing three of me and at least a dozen beasts on my tail.

"Farrow is everything okay?" He wobbled and the lioness wobbled too.

"Yeah... everything's fine."

"Farrow, is everything okay?" My landlord rubbed his eyes furiously, trying to change something that he just couldn't change.

"King of the jungle."

{XVIII}.

ANY NOTION OF Pa.s.sIVITY HAD drained with the blood of a dead writer into the soil of this Algonquin swamp. I lay in the hot stone sauna of a greasy kitchen, bed next to the stove, secret novels of the future scattered across the floor... counting the seconds between thunder and G.o.dly skyshine... the more level I attempted to stay... the more my lungs heaved out of control. Signs of life outside of the pa.s.sing mechanized iron on its rattling tracks were few and far between. At this hour the lack of distractions kept me in my head. New York's geometric prism was just a speck, an heir to the time's trampling.

I dropped the pen in the ink and pressed it to the page. The words were waiting for a destination. I knew where to put them. I knew which ones to ignore. I forgot where I was. I forgot what I was missing. I forgot who I was supposed to be. The words showed up and I placed them... tracing outlines of people I knew... filling in their flesh as if it all melted together. It was a world overlooked by everyone, but myself. The feather pen tore through the paper snapping at the end. The bottle of ink fell on its side soaking the desk and page of writing. I could see the black void.

It was the closest I've approached getting my name back on the cover of the book Missy adopted as her own, s.n.a.t.c.hing it away deep into the cavernous venus man-trap between her legs. Done lugging around the guilt of pimping her out for my own ambitions. She didn't put up much of a fight. Maybe it was in her nature. Missy was an expert of putting an idea in your head and methodically making you believe that it materialized within you. She, the subconscious nurturer, left even the most oblivious pa.s.serby with a destructive obsession. Wildfire, I collapsed to the floor reaching for a pen and paper with enough room to scribble on like a soldier back from the war who only knew how to be a soldier, I could only write. I was writing this as I was thinking this.

Water dripped down. All the dead roses except one were resting on a bed of gla.s.s at my feet. The one lonely one held on with its thorns, stuck to Missy's palm. I gently stepped towards her.

"Farrow. Please." Missy told me a thousand ways on the same tongue, but I stayed in the morning dew of a distant galaxy. A book I never started...

"You hate me because I live by different rules. You couldn't own me - so you used me."

"I'm sorry I was selfish. All I ever want to do is write."

"Isn't that what writers are supposed to do: Write."

The past could no longer be forgotten out of convenience as it had been before the war. Dishonor before death. Suicide mission through the irreparable city. Lorem ipsolem inculare. Not sure if I disowned humanity or the ant farm disowned me.

With an ear-splitting crash, the ceiling came down onto the studio's floor. The rain seemed to have weakened an already mooshy three generation decayed rooftop. Light shot in. I stood revealed to the night sky. The electrical storm showed no sign of weakening, until the entire borough succ.u.mbed to a jittery seizure, bruised from rolling around their cramped digs in drool. Squinting through the blur, I watched the clock reading high noon on the dot fade into dreams of crumbling teeth and invincible strangers sneaking along fire escapes. Lars was in pitch perfect tune: Writers are hustlers by default. I was always buying time to finish up another book. Every decision I made was with the next story in mind.

{XIX}.

THE SUN WAS HIDING FROM me. I lost a day. Slept one afternoon to the next night. Jet lag without the jet. Returning from the opposite of a vacation. A knock at the door. Then another. And one more. The 7 train rattled the window frames.

No other sane option, than to pull myself up into the sky. A quick hop from the kitchen sink. Up through the hole in the ceiling. The city let her gown down, along with the intruders below.

"The place is flooded." Sgt. Bethany Powers shook the rain off her boots. I could smell the gunpowder in her crimson locks.

"There's nothing here." Wasting no time, Detective Anderson nonchalantly picked through my trash with his baton.

"Looks like he's working on a new book." Sgt. Powers picked l.u.s.t Demented off the bed. Flipping through it she got a little excited, vaguely aware of the power concealed in what she was holding. "It's all written by hand. Illegible and on ragged sc.r.a.ps of paper. Parking tickets. Job applications. Court summons. Sample sale fliers. Looks like Farrow wanders the city writing this drivel, picking up sc.r.a.ps of paper whenever the muse hits him."

"Leave it. Guy's had enough..." Detective Anderson seemed to sense that I was listening.

"Finally some leverage. How far do you think Farrow will go to get it back?"

Hidden in the backup rice cooker, I found the unused ticket to Sri Lanka dated for the same week we met. She was planning an escape from her escape. I was in awe by the fact what we shared between us kept her here. I'm sure it was more complex than that, but simple at the core: A love overwhelmed us both. A blizzard without snow. War without boundaries. A storm of beauty and destruction that would take prisoners, end lives, and above all make new life.

The jakes got what they needed and were off, slamming the door behind them. Seems they were sick of chasing me and instead wanted me to chase them. The old rusted iron skeleton of a fire escape took me down to Roosevelt Avenue. The sidewalks were packed under the shadowy tracks of the 7 making it easy enough to stay hidden in the crowd.

Since Sgt. Powers and Detective Anderson stayed in sight, I moved with them. The redhead was saying something the big man didn't appreciate. The way he kept scratching his eyebrow sent chills down my spine. Then she went for him with the taser. He looked surprised, but maybe it was just how it felt to catch a jolting. Detective Anderson twitched and spasmed as he hit the concrete. I found him in a sad shape, eyes rolled to the back of his head, foaming at the mouth.

"What's wrong with him?" A woman cradled his head answering her own question. "A seizure. He's having a seizure."

"Relax. An ambulance will be here shortly."

"Who is he? What happened to him?" The first wave of paramedics find his gun. They find badge. They find his strong grip.

"I'm a detective with the 13th precinct. I'm fine. It's a health condition." The way he grabbed the paramedic's shirt by the collar, dragging him in for a close look was more a threat than promise.

"Still. We're bringing you down to the hospital to have you checked out. Just to rule out..."

"Rule out bringing me anywhere. I'm in the middle of an investigation." The big man was back on his feet. Leading me down an alley with a familiar fury through the back entrance of a building marked with an obscure sign.

{XX}.

THE ENTIRE CITY WAS SINISTER, full of secret worlds. We were already halfway down the curling stairs. Past the non-descript sign. Past the doorman who let us in with a wink. I wasn't sure exactly where the sleeze was oozing from, but it was oozing.

"Farrow this may not be easy for you to hear: We know where Missy is." Detective Anderson looked twice as menacing and ma.s.sive in the red-lighting.

Together we allowed ourselves to be swallowed by the giant velvet l.a.b.i.a with mirrored ceilings and walls. In a backless dress, black lace cut diamonds of soft skin on her thighs. She wasn't facing me yet. She teased us with glimpses of improvisation. Even the women in the audience got excited twirling the thin straws dangling in their drinks. She was something else, dancing the same old feather boa routing as if nothing's on the line. Whipping her body with a quick turn and a look of suspense, she fell back when she saw my face. Already on her hands and knees, she called me to her, hand outstretched, hooking her finger to the slappy upright ba.s.s. The entire lair was sure she was summoning them. I blinked and her stockings were off, balled up and flying through the air. Hypnotically, I gravitated as close as possible to her scent, until my nose was resting on the stage with the others. Hysteria got the better of us as we grabbed for her uncontrollably. She taunted us ripping a cane out of an older gentleman's hand, sliding it across her skin, pumping it between her legs, mockingly attempting to deep throat it, only to twirl it like a schoolgirl at a pep rally.

"Hey you." She whispered breathily leaning in towards me, blowing a kiss.

"What baby what?" I mouthed at her, shaking my head instinctively. She tightened her lips, raising an eyebrow.

"You better learn to read a lady's mind." The music stopped momentarily so the whole room could hear her.

"I will." All the men mouthed in unison.

"What gives you the right to look at me like that?" She held her stare for as long as I could take it. Squeezing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s together, she stood above me, brave and unashamed, commanding the dive with a whimsical smirk.

"You look like someone I know. Someone I once knew." I looked and looked away. She grabbed me violently and kissed me gently. It was another last kiss that I waited for without admitting. She tasted of Christmas tree gin and subway tunnel perfume. It was theatrical and anonymous. It was a soft spark. Static electricity.

Calm moments pa.s.s fast in this land. The bloated fellows packing the joint lost their brotherhood and resorted to simpler times. A scuffle broke out. Two desperadoes that didn't forget to bring their brimmed hats when they crossed the border. The s.p.a.ce was so cramped that we were all connected at the hips. The band tried to hold it together as the percussion intensified knuckles striking bone. Violent men with looks of insatiable hunger multiplied sp.a.w.ning from each other. Strange how they focused on each other with such hate, forgetting the one woman left the room. She punched and kneed the air playfully. Biting into nothingness like a newborn going for a missing breast. There was a certain freedom to the madness. I saw beauty, but had no hold on her.