Hell's Half Acre Read online

  Phineas has a dubious policy about cocaine: When it’s offered him, he tends to do a lot of it.

  I rub a little into my teeth and suddenly I look much better in the mirror.

  I’m a handsome motherfucker, I say.

  Jude opens the drawer that contains the stash of bad heroin. She removes the foil lump and shows it to me. Her left eyebrow goes up.

  Are you paying attention?

  I nod and follow her into the bathroom and watch as she flushes the little package down the toilet without comment.

  There’s still plenty of cocaine, I say.

  Jude turns. You’re not that handsome.

  I smile provocatively at her, then turn and vomit into the sink.

  thirteen.

  INTERNAL DISTORTION, OVERLOAD. Too many conflicting desires and anxieties and I walk five blocks without thinking about where I’m going.

  Flesh, perhaps. Inexpensive flesh.

  Jude was pretty irritated about the vomiting. She said some very nasty things that I’m sure she didn’t mean, then went to meet Miller without me. I took a couple of Vicodin and went to sleep.

  That was yesterday.

  I woke up the next morning and she hadn’t come back. I took a bath and called room service for some breakfast. I needed a drink and thought solid food would be an interesting plot twist but I found the bacon too crunchy and alarming and the Western omelet downright objectionable. I drank the bloody mary and went back to sleep. There was no sign of Jude when I woke up and I formed the theory that she was busy fucking Miller to death and taking her sweet time about it.

  I want to lose myself for a while. I want the anonymous touch of a whore. The streets are fuzzy. The hiss of traffic on wet blacktop sounds like analog, like vinyl. I’m angry and not sure why. I vaguely remember telling Jude that I don’t get jealous but now I’m thinking that was a lie. The swirl of cigarette smoke and ruined voices around the corner. I come upon two women with thick, muscled shoulders and narrow hips, heavy thighs. Terrible mouths and the bodies of men. I ask them to point me in the direction of the Tenderloin and they commence to hoot and holler. They ask me what I’m looking for.

  Gratification, sympathy. False intimacy.

  I don’t know, I say. Maybe a massage.

  Honey, says one. I know just what you need.

  Lord yes, says the other. Four hands better than one. You come along with Sorrow and me and we gonna take care of you. You think you gone to heaven.

  Sorrow? I say.

  That’s right, says the first one. My name is Sorrow and this my sister, Milky Way.

  Temptation.

  I am briefly tempted by the horror of another rented room. The sour sheets. The stink of boiled skin, the heavy perfume. The flicker of dying light. The panic and grind of Latin pop music. The raw, foreign hands of two transvestites with such unlikely names.

  Invasion, humiliation.

  I could easily lose myself, I think.

  No, thanks. I’m looking for a regular girl.

  Oh, honey. Now that’s rude.

  I believe you want to apologize, sucker.

  I’m sorry. I’m looking for a different girl.

  Uh huh. You sorry as can be.

  What kind of girl?

  I don’t know. Foreign.

  They laugh and screech like mad chickens and Milky Way finally tells me to go fuck myself.

  Jude and I are two people, not one. Funny but I have to remind myself of that sometimes. The velvet warms and binds but I don’t really know her. I don’t know what’s in her heart. I am safe with her for one day, two. The cocoon is temporary and what do I want. Obliteration. The ability to fly.

  I tell myself to shut up, to keep walking. I have four hundred dollars. Enough to take me back to Flagstaff, to a mattress on the floor. Dishwater skin and bourbon in a jelly jar and a window with an unbroken view of the sky. The edge of the desert. I can listen to public radio and daydream about Atlantis and I can satisfy my physical hunger with my own two hands. I can destroy myself, if necessary. I stop in the middle of the street and look down at my open hands. The little finger of my left hand has twice been broken, and is now crooked. Otherwise they are ordinary hands with but one visible scar between them. Twenty-nine stitches on the palm of my right hand that effectively wiped out my life line. I tell people that it happened in a knife fight but the truth is that I was the only one involved. The wail of a car horn and someone yells at me to get the Christ out of the road.

  I keep walking, keep walking.

  This is the wrong way.

  I am moving slowly uphill and I have a feeling that the Tenderloin should be down from here. I should be moving in a downward spiral. But perhaps this is metaphorical thinking. Or would that be irony, symbolism. These things are vaguely defined in our culture. This is San Francisco and eventually I will find whatever it is I’m looking for.

  The Paradise Spa on Hemlock, a nasty little alley off Van Ness. Tanning and oriental massage. The very same establishment recommended me by young Jeremy. The sign is barely visible from the street and I might have easily walked by it. Blue neon, pale and wispy. Tucked in along a doughnut shop, a Vietnamese grocery. The Paradise Spa is open until midnight. Because you never know. You never know when you might suffer a pinched nerve, or when you might want to do a little maintenance on that tan. I wonder if they even have tanning beds.

  The front door needs a coat of paint.

  Open it and step inside and I’m facing a steel mesh door, locked. Dark red curtain behind it. To the right of the door is a small black sign with white lettering that tells me a half hour massage is fifty dollars. A whole hour is very economical at eighty dollars. Tanning is twenty bucks for twenty minutes but who gives a shit. To the left of the door is a buzzer. Press it with my thumb, briefly.

  The red curtain is pulled aside and the face of a troll appears, shriveled and brown as a peach pit with black eyes bright. The eyes study me a long moment. Troll apparently decides I am neither cop nor psycho because the door is unlocked.

  Come, she says.

  Troll takes me by the wrist with little claw, pulls me inside.

  Come. You ever be here before?

  No.

  You want half hour?

  I want to be agreeable. Yes, I say. The half hour.

  Come.

  Warm, soft light. Japanese prints on the walls of the hallway. The furniture is cheap, simple. The kind of shit you find in a Holiday Inn. Troll leads me down the hall past several closed doors, her sandals flapping softly on tile floor. I hear whispers.

  Then grunting, man or pig.

  Pulse quickening now. Troll shows me to a tiny room with bed and chair. The bed is covered with white towels. On the wall above the bed is a shelf with yellow lamp and radio, a box of tissues, and various oils and lotions. The radio is tuned to soft jazz, elevator-style. Troll holds out her hand, impatient. The money, yes. Fumble in pockets and produce fifty dollars.

  You need shower, she says.

  What?

  Take shower. You wash.

  No. I’m clean.

  Troll makes a nasty smacking sound with her leather tongue, stares at me. I stare back at her, hoping she doesn’t insist on the shower. I feel relatively cozy in the confines of this room and I just want her to close the door, to go away. I don’t like this idea of a shower at all. I would be vulnerable, paranoid under bright lights. I would be slippery and exposed and I don’t want my asshole inspected.

  I don’t want a shower.

  Troll stares at me and I decide she wants an explanation.

  I’m afraid someone will steal my shoes.

  Troll frowns and sighs. Undress, she says. Lie on bed.

  The door closes behind her and I sit down in the chair. Unlace my boots with fingers numb, unresponsive. Wonder how it is that my hands fall asleep in my pockets. I flex them a few times. Touch left thumb to throat and find my pulse is racing. I shove the boots and socks under the chair and out of sight. Pull off the rest of my
clothes and try to fold them but I’m incompetent and finally heap them on the chair. I stand naked beside the bed a moment, staring at the radio. The soft jazz is maddening and I flick at the tuning knob until I find Patsy Cline and stop. I turn around in a manic circle because country stations are tricky. Patsy may be followed by Kenny Rogers or worse. I tell myself to lie down. There’s a laminated notice on the wall above the radio that lists the house rules of Paradise Spa, with a lot of misplaced apostrophes and inappropriate italics. The thing is framed, like a diploma. Translation: no alcohol, no illegal drugs, no weapons, no violence. No solicitation and no sexual acts of any kind because the Paradise is a wholesome place.

  Patsy Cline falls to pieces. The bed smells like disinfectant, with a hint of breezy fabric softener. Bounce, I mutter to myself. Downy. I flop on the mattress, belly down. Then wiggle around like a nervous cockroach and clumsily cover my ass with a towel. Take deep breaths, meditative. I wish my heart would stop pounding and I wonder what Jude is doing to young Jeremy and abruptly Patsy is muscled aside by Kenny Rogers. “The Gambler.” I want to laugh but I can’t.

  The door opens with the coo of a dove. Hello.

  Open my eyes and at first I think there is some mistake. The girl is barely five feet tall in a little plastic white dress that clings to her like wet tissue. Her hair is a massive, fizzy black nightmare. She has arms and legs thin as sticks and surely this is illegal. The girl is maybe fourteen. I roll over and try to sit up but she pushes me down with a cool hand and now I see her face. Tiny wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. And her breasts are surreal, too large for her body and perfectly round and defined by the clean hard edges of the surgically enhanced. Her breasts swell above her ribcage as if they might float away.

  What’s your name? she says.

  Um. Fred, I say.

  Please. On your tummy, Fred.

  And what’s your name? I say.

  I am Veronica, she says.

  A slight accent but her English is not bad. Better than the troll’s and no doubt better than your average American’s. I think she is Vietnamese but then I am only slightly less stupid than the next white guy when it comes to distinguishing one East Asian group from another. Veronica runs a hand up my thigh and pulls the little white towel aside. I don’t have an erection yet but I can feel the blood gathering. She smiles faintly and I feel a gentle twitch of nausea. I roll over onto my stomach and close my eyes.

  Veronica has great hands.

  This is not a massage, however. It’s foreplay. It’s like being tickled by silk feathers, by the tiny velvet fingers of dolls. Her hands roam up and down my legs, stroking my ass and thighs and feet with the sweet lazy touch of a lover and now one hand sinks shivering between my legs to lightly touch my penis.

  What’s this? she says.

  I don’t like this hide and seek shit, usually. But it’s nice to close my eyes and pretend I’m twelve and playing doctor with the girl next door. I don’t remember her name but she has dirty blond hair and crooked teeth and she smells like strawberry lip gloss and maybe, just maybe she has a fucking Band-Aid on her knee, oh my.

  What do you want? she whispers.

  I open my eyes and roll over. Veronica massages my chest and belly and leans close to me, rubbing her hard round tits against my arm. What do you want. What do you want. I want her to do whatever she wants to do. I want her to be professional. I want her to touch me for money.

  You want to make love, she says.

  Love. The word seems grotesque.

  I don’t think so.

  Veronica shoves one finger into her mouth and sucks at it. You want?

  Why not?

  You will give me nice tip, she says.

  Of course.

  Veronica is already bored with me. She sighs and mechanically lowers the straps of her dress and her cartoon tits bounce into my hands. She allows me to fondle her nipples for approximately ninety seconds, then pushes my hand away. Veronica straddles my torso, her ass in my face. The white plastic dress is short and quickly rides up over her hips and under it she’s wearing a black lace thong that is too small for her and her shaved red pussy is two inches from my face and I am tempted to lift my head and bite her, to rip at the thong with my teeth but now she is nibbling and kissing at my rock-hard dick and briefly I am confronted with an image of Jude wearing the same black thong and she’s laughing or crying and Miller stands over her and just as Veronica sticks her pinky in my ass I grab her by the shoulders and push her ravenous mouth away.

  Stop, I say. I’m sorry, but just stop.

  And with that, the transaction is finished. Veronica hops off me and quickly straightens her dress. She adjusts her mass of hair and I see now that it’s a wig. She leaves the room and I lounge there, a frog waiting to be dissected. I have been injected with that shit that makes the blood purple and gelatinous and still I feel empty as hell. I just want to get the fuck out of here. I reach for a tissue and swab at my package but it’s pretty gory down there, still rock hard, now marked with red lipstick. I won’t wash her mouth away without a nice long bath. The door opens again and Veronica slips through, smiling. She holds a Diet Pepsi in one hand and a warm washcloth in the other. She hands me the soda and I sit there like a soiled child while she wipes down my gear with the washcloth. And when she’s finished, she holds out her hand. I give her the Diet Pepsi and she frowns. I reach for my pants and pull out three twenties. Veronica rolls her eyes and I pull out another one and now she smiles and nods and the money disappears into her shoe. Veronica asks if I am not thirsty and I say no, thanks. She shrugs and leaves me to dress myself and when I open the door, Troll is waiting to escort me out.

  I could kill myself sometimes. I am cast adrift in California and though I may appear to be easily confused, I know exactly what I’m doing. Through the filter, removed. One angle black and white fuzzy with no sound. I am talking to myself on a wet sidewalk tainted with yellow then red of traffic lights in a strange city and I’m not wearing a watch but I imagine it’s been less than an hour since I left the hotel room. I have just had my cock effectively gobbled by a stranger and I am feeling no pain and now I am aware of blue neon behind me, the fading signature of a ghost.

  fourteen.

  I LEAVE THE PARADISE SPA and walk up Geary to Jones. Enter the bar called Mao’s that is empty but not. The walls are painted with black and white murals of old world film actors. Charlie Chaplin. Fatty Arbuckle. Laurel and Hardy. They stare and stare and I feel surrounded. I go to the bar and an old guy with silver hair and little round eyeglasses comes over, puts a napkin in front of me. The empty barstools to my left and right are too perfectly aligned and a little creepy. I ask for ice water and two shots of whiskey but I am really tempted to demand a glass of hydrogen peroxide because my mouth feels wrong. It feels like it’s full of fucking cigarette ash. I suck down the water in a long furious swallow, drooling. The bartender has a lazy brown eye that wanders around loose as a marble while the other stares straight through me.

  That’s gonna be eight dollars, he says.

  I give him a twenty and tell him to go ahead and bring another shot.

  Long day? he says.

  Endless, I say.

  The bartender shrugs and glances up at one of the overhead televisions. There are seven of them, I notice. On two screens are the same silent baseball game, the Dodgers and Braves. Three of the others are running old movies. Bette Davis howling and bug-eyed and completely nuts on the left. Jimmy Stewart peeping at his freaky neighbors to the right. And Laurence Olivier tediously dying straight ahead. The last two screens are gray and blank.

  Are you Mao? I say.

  Professionally speaking, yes, the bartender says.

  Interesting name for a bar.

  It’s all about mind control, he says. Propaganda, baby. The customers come in here like suicidal sheep and the televisions mesmerize them. The old movies make people melancholy and therefore thirsty. The baseball keeps them sedated. Think about it. Television
and advertising and the power of mass hypnosis were completely unrealized before Mao and Hitler showed us a thing or two. Of course, it would be financial suicide to name a bar after Hitler.

  I stare at him and he laughs, low and rasping.

  The place is kind of empty, I say.

  Yeah, he says. What the fuck do I know?

  What about soft porn, I say.

  Nah. He waves a hand. Don’t want the wrong element in here.

  I shrug and swallow the first whiskey.

  Pull up a stool, boy. You might as well stay a while.

  I sit down and take slow, cautious sips of the second whiskey. I would hate to get drunk. I grin to myself and look up at the Dodgers game and see that the Braves are methodically destroying them. The players on the Dodger bench are serene, peaceful. The camera moves in on one young black player, a rookie who wears silver wraparound sunglasses even though it’s a night game. He stares out at the field as if he’s sitting in church and his face is frozen, cut from stone. The camera lingers and now I detect the faint twitch of artery or muscle below his jaw.

  You said that the customers are suicidal, I say. The sheep.

  The bartender nods. Yeah.

  What do you mean by that, exactly.

  Huh, he says. I’m not a goddamn psychologist and wouldn’t want to be. But it seems to me that anybody comes into a bar and sits by himself and sinks five or six cocktails one after another and never says boo to another soul well he’s got a gun to his head. He’s just taking his time about it.

  I regard my own row of drinks.

  Don’t take offense, he says.

  I wouldn’t.

  The bartender grins. Like I said previously. I don’t know shit.

  You ever think about it, Mao?

  Pull my own plug?

  Yeah.

  Once or twice a day, in the morning especially.

  The morning?

  What the hell. I’m sixty-four years old. I got arthritis. I try to jerk off and all I get is a fucking cramp in my neck. Thinking about suicide is the next best thing.