Hell's Half Acre Read online

  Hey, I said.

  I just came from the clinic, she said.

  Are you okay?

  No. I’m pregnant.

  Oh. Shit.

  Shit, she said.

  How pregnant?

  Eight weeks. She lit a cigarette and immediately put it out.

  Bad for the baby, she muttered. Her hand was trembling and she made a fist. I wanted to say that everything was okay, that we were together and everything was okay but it was almost impossible to conceive of Jude pregnant, Jude a mother, and finally my brain kicked in like a radio that only works on rainy days because rats have been chewing the wires. That blood on the bed was something to worry about yes but there was something else, wasn’t there. But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

  The attack was exactly eight weeks ago, she said.

  And we, I said. We had sex that morning, and the night before. I remember because the phone kept ringing and you threw the portable out the window.

  Jude half smiled. That’s right.

  We didn’t use a condom, I said.

  No, she said. But you withdrew.

  And they didn’t, I said. Did they?

  Jude sighed. She said that she was tired.

  Look, I said. It’s okay. We’re gonna be okay.

  Jude shook her head. No, we’re not.

  She went to take a nap and when I went to check on her, she said she wanted to be alone. I tried to pull myself together. I got myself cleaned up and went to the grocery store, numbly thinking that she would need things like chicken soup and milk and ice cream and bottled water because even if she was going to get an abortion she would need to eat. I wasn’t too rational. I hadn’t been out of the apartment in almost a month and my vision was still blurry and when I came back to the apartment Jude was gone. She was just gone. I went out and bought a shotgun, and waited as long as I could stand it, maybe a month. I was hoping the men would come back to finish the job. But they never did and I realized Jude was probably hunting them, and maybe she’d already found them, and after a while the silence of the apartment and the springtime stink of the Quarter had driven me half crazy, and I decided Jude wasn’t coming back. I got on a bus and headed back to Denver, where I plunged myself into an altogether different nightmare. But that’s another story.

  I’m still sitting in a yellow cab outside the King James Hotel. The driver is waiting for his money. I reach into my pocket and find the wallet I took off the dead man in the alley. I flip it open to find a wad of small bills, maybe ninety bucks. No credit cards. Driver’s licenses from five states. The same blond hair and silvery eyes with five different names, and if the IDs are fakes, they are well crafted. I study his face for half a tick. Thin, intelligent, fierce, hard as the underside of your boot. The Nevada license, expired, is the only one that bears his Christian name, Sugar Jefferson Finch. This was one of the dogs Jude was hunting. This was one of the men who attacked us in New Orleans, one of the savage fucks who raped her, and I saved his life today. I wonder if he was the one who took me down with that hammer, and I feel sick.

  Furious and sick.

  The dead man in the alley was presumably his kid brother, also known as Shane. Tucked into Sugar’s wallet is a book of matches from the Alamo Hotel, with a phone number scribbled on the inside. Might be a long shot, might be an easy ground ball, hit right at me. The cab’s radio crackles with the dispatcher’s voice, and now my driver turns around to favor me with his gray fleshy face, mottled with a pink rash.

  What’s it gonna be, pal? In or out.

  You know a place called the Alamo?

  The driver grunts. Big drop-off from the James to the Alamo.

  That’s cool. Is it far?

  The Alamo is strictly Section Eight. Peeling paint and the stink of mildew and a humming death vibe. The lobby is a narrow brown tomb, the walls painted the color of shit. I hate to generalize, but if I was looking to kill myself in a cheap coldwater garret where none of my neighbors are gonna say boo, this is the place. The receptionist is a guy watching TV behind a chickenwire cage. The house rates are scrawled on a blackboard behind his head, which is shaved smooth as my ass and covered in fine, intricate tattoos. I step up to the cage and the guy growls at me, jerks his fascinating skull at the blackboard. I glance at the board just long enough to register the notion that a bed in this shithole may be rented by the hour for the kingly ransom of ten dollars.

  I’m not interested in a room, I say.

  You a cop?

  I’m looking for a buddy of mine, Sugar Finch.

  The skull gives me a long look, and apparently decides I am just unsavory enough to indeed be pals with a piece of shit like this Sugar Finch.

  He’s in room 39, third floor.

  You know if he’s in?

  Think I saw him, yeah.

  Don’t buzz him, okay. I want to surprise him.

  Buzz him? Shit man, you think we got phones in the rooms?

  I take the gummy wet stairs up to the third floor, my steps echoing soft. The fire door opens onto a long windowless hallway with rancid gray carpet and gray walls streaked with water damage. The air is funky in the Alamo. I cruise silent down the hall and find the door marked 39, keep going. Communal toilet at the opposite end, which accounts for some of the funk. I retrace my steps to the fire door. On the wall to my left is a fuse box. I flip it open and take out my knife; what I aim to do deserves the cover of darkness.

  I shove my knife into the control panel and twist. The hall lights blink once, and go black. It’s just like being inside my head. Dark, with lingering echoes and the faint stink of mildew. I touch one hand to the wall and stealth-walk along to 39. Trouble is I’m not much of a killer. The fact is, I’ve never killed anybody, not on purpose. I’ve wanted to, plenty of times, but always stopped short. It’s just not part of my wiring. Now I’m in a dark hallway, maybe twenty-five feet from one of the men who raped Jude, and I don’t quite know what I’m going to do. I may suffer mind-ripping headaches all the time, and with them apocalyptic visions, but I can’t discern the future.

  The best I can imagine is disappearing into the shadows along the wall. In a minute, Sugar Finch will come out of the room nervous and freaked by the power failure. It would be the easiest thing in the world to sweep his legs out from under him, to fall like a cat onto his chest, to slash open his throat before he even cries out. Easy as cake to imagine, damn near impossible to see myself doing it. Now the door to 39 opens cool as a whisper and I fade against the wall.

  four.

  THE KING JAMES HOTEL IS STRICTLY OLD WORLD. I limp into the lobby, still shaken. A silent valet in an elegant green uniform comes forward to take my bag, a shapeless leather pouch that holds my toothbrush and what remains of my wardrobe. I shake my head and mutter that I’m not feeble. The valet tips his cap, flashes me a ghostly smile. I give him five dollars, because I believe in big tips and because I don’t necessarily want him to notice that I’ve just had my ass kicked good and proper.

  The valet is young and thin with dark circles under blue eyes.

  What’s your name? I say.

  Jeremy, sir. I’m here until midnight.

  I have a bad hangover, Jeremy. What do you recommend?

  He shrugs. Vanilla milkshake with a shot of espresso and splash of brandy.

  That sounds perfect.

  Your room number, sir?

  I glance at the scrap of paper on which I’ve written Jude’s room number.

  My name is Poe. I’m in room 1221.

  The kid blushes at the mention of this number and I gather he’s met Jude. This makes me smile. Jude was always very sweet to grocery clerks and postmen. I give the kid another five and he says the milkshake is already on its way.

  The elevator rises slow and dreamy. I use the time to pull myself together. Take a few deep breaths to slow the pulse, examine the shoes for dog shit. Look in the mirror, check my face for spattered blood. Polish the teeth with my shirtsleeve and hope my breath is not too poison
ous. I slap my face for a touch of color. Drag the fingers through my hair and sniff the clothes. Tobacco and vodka and unwashed Phineas. I stare at my hands, which tremble. I tell myself that everything is right as rain. Only now do I allow the video drone in my head to replay the unhappy meeting I just had with Sugar Finch.

  On the third floor of the Alamo I had disappeared into the shadows, soft and velvet. A fire alarm sounded, a low-pressure slow burning grind that hit you in the spine and made every molecule in you beg to get the fuck out of there. I waited, though. I was gonna kill this guy. I didn’t know how. I imagined he would be running when he came out of the room and I was going to sweep his legs, take him down the way Jude taught me. Then disable him with a punch to the throat and figure out how to stop his heart beating. Maybe I would ram my thumbs into his eyes and just keep digging until I struck gold, until I scooped out brain matter. But when he came out of room 39, Sugar Finch wasn’t running. He was walking, right at me. Like he knew I was there, like the motherfucker could see me plain as day. I went low and tried to sweep his legs but it was a joke. He was way too fast and he jumped right at me. He was on top of me like a spider on a moth, his hand on my throat.

  He leaned close and said, I remember you. You saved my life today. I won’t forget that. But come to my house even once more and you won’t walk again.

  He stood up, yanking me to my feet. I could barely breathe.

  I remember your girl too, he said. That pussy tasted just like sunshine. He grinned, and licked his teeth. I should have kissed you goodbye that day, you could have tasted her on my mouth.

  Then he was gone, blowing away easy as smoke.

  Now the elevator groans and the doors open on the twelfth floor of the King James.

  The hallway before me is silent. Blue and comforting. The light is soft and there are no shadows. Hum of a faraway ice machine. Lush carpet underfoot, dark as midnight with random flowers and triangles of pink and gold. And so soft that my footsteps are a whisper. I could fall over dead and the carpet would swallow the noise and this is why I love hotels. Two a.m. and two p.m. are interchangeable. The light is ever gentle. There is always ice to be had and a body may hit the floor without disturbing anyone. The room numbers descend to the left and I move along in search of 1221, the fingers of my right hand trailing down the wall behind me. The hall twists and turns and intersects itself more than I feel is necessary, and I wonder if the rooms come in unusual shapes and sizes. I am soon lost down a narrow tributary and the numbers are pissing me off. They irrationally grow larger on one side and smaller on the other. I pass 1217, 1219 and stop. Blue midnight stretches before and behind me. Traces of pink and gold and the underwater light of dreams.

  The door to 1221 is cracked open. Not a mistake Jude would generally make, not in this life or the next. I push it open ever so gentle, and still there is a soft hiss of escaping air, as if I have just opened the hatch of a spaceship. The room is five degrees colder than the hallway and completely fucking dark. The door closes softly behind me and I’m blind as an underground beast.

  Exhale and wonder.

  The brain of your average human male is damp and slippery and the descent into adolescent fantasy is as casual as falling off a log. I turn on the light and Jude is naked and blue on the bathroom floor, a plastic bag over her head. I turn on the light and Jude is lounging on a puffy white bed in black leather pants and nothing else. Tangle of wet black hair on white pillows twisting like snakes and the pants are so tight they will have to be peeled from her skin. I turn on the light and Jude stands an arm’s length away, a straight razor in one hand. She wears dark sunglasses and a glossy red raincoat that won’t show blood.

  I turn on the light and the room is empty.

  Make a fast sweep through the entire space, which is big enough to house a small army, to be sure. I take a pass through the bathroom. Nightmares and bad blood be damned. Black tile and three walls of mirrors. The shower is a dark chamber behind pale green glass, empty. The tub is sunken into the floor. There is a bidet, which pleases me somehow and I smile into three mirrors at once. There is an antique cosmetics bag on the edge of the marble sink, black leather with silver clasp. The only other sign of her presence is a fine black streak of fecal matter on the slope of the toilet bowl.

  Taped to the bathroom wall are three photographs, bright color shots taken with a telephoto, blown up to eight by ten. By the angles, I’d guess she shot these from high above. I see Jude on a rooftop, crouched like a sniper and wonder why she didn’t just kill them when she had them in her sights. And a voice in my head says, because that wouldn’t have been so up close and personal as an intimate scalping. I focus on the three faces, three monsters. Two of them are Shane and Sugar Finch. Their names, birthdates, Socials, tattoos, and distinctive marks are written in fine black ink along the borders, like delicate marginalia. The third photo is a guy with dark hair and blue eyes flecked with black, like turquoise in the sun. The name is John Ransom Miller. Five foot nine, one seventy. No Social, no distinguishing marks. D.O.B. is 11.02.59. Blink and I’m back in our flat in the Quarter. I see John Ransom Miller sprawled on the floor. This is the guy I crippled with that toilet tank lid. I wonder if he’s up and walking again. Maybe he’s in a chair.

  Scrawled on the mirror above the sink, in brown lipstick, are five words. The velvet warms and binds.

  Velvet.

  The trouble is I don’t know the frame of reference, the context.

  Velvet.

  Jude always loved the word. She tossed it around like spare change and it had more than one meaning to her. In friendly conversation, the velvet may simply be defined as twilight. The gloaming. The velvet was telephone code for heroin. I had often heard Jude refer to her pussy as the velvet. And the velvet was used metaphysically to refer to the subconscious, to childhood memories. For Jude, velvet was the lost time of alien abductions. Velvet was euphoria and dread. Velvet was a perfectly good word, but one that always troubled me.

  To my mind, the velvet is best translated as the sleep that resembles death. Velvet is the sleep that becomes death.

  Outside of the bathroom proper is a vanity area with mirror and sink that serves as the bar. I reach for an open bottle of Jack Daniels and take small contemplative sips from it as I survey the room. The windows are blotted out by heavy curtains the color of smoke that fall from ceiling to floor. The sun may as well not exist. The sun has no hope in this room, and again it could be day or night. The television and refrigerator are tastefully housed inside an armoire. The carpet is the pale fleshy pink of a monster’s tongue and the walls are painted red.

  Two queen beds, one of them stripped bare.

  The exposed mattress is yellow with pale gray stripes and a bright red bloom near the middle that looks like fresh blood but is actually a pair of red silk underpants and now I feel a faraway surge of nausea tinged with memory. My head is fucking with me. The other bed is covered in a white quilt with splashes of blue flowers and looks as if it has not been touched since the housekeepers left it.

  Along the far wall are two Beowulf chairs and a curved glass coffee table the shape of a teardrop, beneath which are two curious blue sneakers with orange stripes. Jude does not wear sneakers, as far as I know. I try to imagine her jogging along a bike path in sweatpants and sports bra and it just doesn’t work for me.

  The cracked leather pouch still hangs around my neck as if I’m afraid someone might steal my toothbrush. I shrug it to the floor and kick it into a corner. I lift the bottle to my lips and commence to take another, longer drink of whiskey.

  Jude blows softly on the back of my neck as she walks past and I nearly jump out of my skin.

  Drinking from the bottle, she says. What would your mother think?

  I choke and spit and manage not to bite off a mouthful of glass. I turn around slow as blood clotting, my eyes shut tight. Five years since the attack and in my head her face is still terribly swollen and bruised. The skin is black in some places and her left e
ye is drifting loose in the socket. I open my eyes and her face is perfect but for the pale narrow scar that nearly blinded her, that left a notch in her right eyebrow and now runs almost parallel with the worry lines in her forehead and disappears into her gold and brown hair.

  Jesus, I say. Have a little mercy.

  Mercy, she says. Mercy?

  Compassion, I say.

  Huh, she says. Any relation to the word merchandise?

  The same Latin root, I say. I will give you this fine pig and ten sacks of grain if you spare my miserable life.

  I thought you liked being miserable, she says.

  Her hair is damp and longer than I remember. Her mouth is unchanged, the round lush lips with a tiny scar at one corner, where her boyfriend hit her with a rock as a kid. She wears a tight lime green shirt with no sleeves. The shadow and distraction of ribs and muscle and nipple. She’s had her bellybutton pierced since I last saw her. She wears blue jeans too big for her, that hang well below the hip. Barefoot, she is perhaps two inches shorter than I am but it’s hard to be sure because she rarely stands still. I’m dizzy, looking at her. The air between us is bright with sparks, like there’s static electricity coming from her skin. I have an urge to back away from her and I tell myself not to be silly.

  She reaches to touch my face and I flinch away.

  There is a brief, heavy silence. Jude stares at me, not smiling.

  I open my mouth and she leaps on me like a cat. I drop the bottle and we fall to the bed, struggling. Jude was always very strong and she enjoyed violent foreplay but she’s not laughing, her eyes are shining with something that resembles desire but isn’t and when I try to kiss her, she moves her head and sinks her teeth lightly into my throat. I throw her to the floor and roll away. My hand goes to my neck and I am fairly surprised to see that she has actually drawn blood.