Blue
Margaret Li

 


Blue.
No, green-blue.
The pores in my face are opening, tingling. It takes a minute or an hour for me to realize where I am, or where my face is. A hot, clear liquid is very close to the tip of my nose. A dancing ripple caused by my breath reflects the angle of an eyelash, the white of eye. The steam enters my nostrils and it is suddenly difficult to breathe. My face is halfway inside a plastic green-blue bowl filled with boiling water.
I am tempted to move but it might splash the water. It’s so close to me I’m not sure whether my nose is submerged or not. A hand at my neck, holding me in place. It is not my own.
Awake, Mullaney? A voice asks.
My lips might touch the hot liquid. I am sure it is water but it could be poison, urine. I try to place the voice. It sounds like a silver wire causing feedback, high-pitched, male. A piccolo. It is like a claw. He sounds like a kid with greasy acne working at Mcdonald’s.
Awake, I say. Alive and well.
I would not say well, but alive, certainly.
He has taken my glasses away. My vision would be steamy otherwise. I want my glasses.
I want my glasses, I say.
You have no need for them, he answers.
I have a message to send, I say.
He releases my neck; it is sore and sweaty where his hand was. I lift my head cautiously, turn around, but there is no one. The place looks like a hospital. It is very white and sterile. I take a minute to look for my glasses, carelessly dropped on the floor. It is uneasy for me to walk, like a hallucination. I am weightless but I am afraid of stumbling. The steps are heavy.
I pause on the way out to see myself in a cloudy mirror. The hair is gray and sleek as an old man’s. I look like a fool. Eyes like bruises and stubborn lips surrounded by prickly hairs. A fine drippy substance clings to my temple. Brown and flaky. I remember getting hit by a shoe. Clothes and yellow boots in a plastic bag.
I am sure it is night. The air is cool like relief from June’s heat.
June.
I told her I left, I’m sure. She must be wondering where I am now. I should go home. But I don’t remember where that is.


~~~
A woman lies restless on an old couch. It has sunken in the middle and she’s not really sure who made the ass groove there. She picks the lint off the faded canvas while a phone dangles on her arm.
It’s late, she says into the phone. I shouldn’t go.
She pauses and glances at the thick black clock. The minutes are passing by. A small pot of chocolate rests on the cluttered coffee table. She spoons some into her mouth while listening to the other end of the line. The suggestions, the pleading.
She laughs, mildly amused.
I am a single woman, she says. Watching Lana Turner movies alone in a rathole apartment. I am not in the mood to go out on a date nor will I ever be.
The person on the other end of the line is tired. It will be fun, April, I promise, the person says.
Liar, April says.
They exchange good-byes and April picks up a Hershey’s kiss from the floor. She’s sure it’s bypassed the five second rule but doesn’t really care. She pops it into her mouth and ventures into her small closet.
The hair in her brush is a pale winter sky. Her hair seems to be vacating her head but lately she’s just put on a hat to obscure the missing parts. She ties it up into a bun cleanly and adjusts a glittery red wig onto her head. She lazily flips through a small rack of dresses and tosses a gold one onto a chair. It slips over her head like a bag and barely covers her hips, her thighs. She draws lines above her eyes with a choking pencil. It looks like a big mess and with a thick application of glittery lip gloss she could pass for a drag queen. She laughs and zips up a feathery black jacket.


~~~
I’m bleeding, she says.
I stare at the strange old woman slumped on the sidewalk. Her lips raw and red like winter hands.
I think you just applied too much lipstick, ma’am, I say.
She frowns at me, hands knitting an imaginary cloth. Her own dress is a mockery of drapes, linen-like and thick and dirty. I found my clothes in a plastic bag, brown pants and a pale jacket. I put them on before I left. Her teeth are gray but not rotten.
I’m bleeding, she says again. Moon’s blood.
Oh, I say.
You don’t happen to have any tampons?
No, I say. But I’m sure there’s a drug store down the street. Some people have begun to stare at us. I turn to walk away.
My nose, she says. It’s bleeding too.
I look at her again, and she’s having a nosebleed. I hurry away.



~~~
April walks through a strangely lighted diner with cozy metal-and-vinyl seats. She sees a friend sitting in one far corner, the green fluorescent dimness illuminating fake lashes. It’s Candy and she’s smiling.
Darling, she says. We must fix your makeup, dear.
April frowns. Where are our dates, she asks.
Oh, they’ll be here, she says.
Candy takes a matching shiny black bag next to her hip and places it on the table. Inside are Q-tips and cotton balls. She pats her face with a brownish foundation and pulls some red wisps down from the wig. A black pencil glides across her untweezed eyebrows, a jewel stud in the corner of her eye for effect. She glues on false lashes and glances out the window. She lines her lips with a brown pencil and fills it in with a peachy cream. She tops it with impossibly glittery gloss and Candy wants to be a makeup artist someday.
April laughs. Am I done, she asks.
No, no. Not yet, dear. You need a bit of blush.
She sweeps on a bronzy powder far too dark for April’s skin with a cotton ball.
Smile for me, baby, she says.
April stretches the corners of her mouth, in what could be called a smile but really isn’t.
You need some dental surgery, honey.


~~~
I’m cold, precisely cold, dying of a burn. The back of my hairs are a gentle black, sharp against the silver. A child thought it might be amusing to singe my neck with a cigarette lighter. I thought it might be entertaining as well, so I let him. He had shaggy black hair that seemed slightly oily and maybe only sixteen years old. He convinced me to let him burn the ends of my hair with a very sharp knife, a knife coughing into the reddish flesh of my neck.
He’s in a dirty alley now, ankles lined with yesterday’s newspaper. I opened his wallet, a ten dollar bill. I wrote "We are alone" on it and left it on his dead belly. He will smell bad in a few days but no doubt someone will pick it up anyway. It will travel around the country, smelling of a dead boy’s bowels.
I pass by the glassy walls of a bookstore, a poster of a Kandinsky collection floating inside. The abstractions of Kandinsky always gave me headaches, too many colors, concentric circles. Rectangles upon rectangles upon rectangles. Then I notice I have no reflection.




~~~
Candy doesn’t really look like a man. She’s tallish and slender with black hair closely cut around the ears. She has high, sharp eyebrows and pale red lipstick, round cheeks. The apparel is still gaudy, thick.
Hatred is like a jewel, she says. You polish it until it is beautiful in your heart, and it crusts around your beating flesh until you heart beats no more.
April places a manicured hand lightly over the egg-stained menu. Shall we order, she asks.
Candy places her hand over April’s, touching a gold band. Why do you have this on, she asks.
April shrugs. After Kevin died, I turned the diamond over. She flashes her palm to show the jewel. The ring just wouldn’t come off, she says.
A strange look flashes in Candy’s eyes. Surely that’s a sign, she says. Her thick extended lashes suddenly flicker up, a bell gently clanking against the doorway. She smiles, teeth thick and white.
Here are our dates, she says.


~~~

Upon closer inspection I can see that I haven’t shaved in a while. The multitude of hairs make the flesh look gray as the sky. The air has teeth, as if it is about to snow. The faceless masses drift by, the click of shoes on pavement. The bookstore has a café and it seems faintly cozy with yellow-orange undertones. The smell of sweet coffee. Coffee will make me pee out my calcium but I won’t really care until I’m sixty.
I take a seat by the counter, a soft cushion. Brown glossy tables. A poetry reading, something about milk churning from a lover’s pulse.
Coffee, dark. Three sugars, I say.
The woman is wearing a striped button-up shirt with a green apron. She is nervous but she brings me my coffee. It costs a dollar and sixty-two cents for a small cup.
Her hair is lovely and dark and wavy. Do you like Kandinsky, I ask.
She appears puzzled. Kandinsky?
Abstract artist. There is a promotional poster by the window.
Yes. She hesitates. I saw you looking through there.
I was looking at my reflection, I say.
How vain. She smiles so nervously that I wonder what’s wrong.
Look, she says. I don’t know how to tell you this, but the owner wants you to leave. Could you please leave?
Why? I just bought a coffee.
I know. I’m sorry.
I would like to stay for the poetry reading.
Maybe you should take off your coat, she says. It bothers some people. It looks dirty.
My coat is a pale tan, camel’s hair. I’ve forgotten it’s splattered with a sixteen year old boy’s blood, some of my own. Oh, I say. Was that the problem. It’s just a ketchup stain.
I clap absentmindedly with everyone else as the poetry ends. I hold out a hand to the woman. I’m Mullaney, I say.
Karen, she says, shaking my outstretched hand.
I glance at a bowl of fruit on the counter. It looks very familiar. Blue. No, green-blue.
Where is that bowl from, I say.
She shrugs. I think the silverware is bought from the place down the street. She points.
I notice that it’s a large store with a green awning, household products adorning the windows. It must have started raining a few minutes ago; people are huddled under the storefront.
The coffee tastes warm, a little too sweet. There are no more customers after I came in; they have come for the poetry reading, or to avoid the rain. I buy a small bottle of V8 tomato juice for another dollar. It tastes unpleasantly like the air radiating from a computer, stale. I wonder how long it has been sitting on the shelf.
I wipe my glasses on the sleeve of my black turtleneck. Karen says she has gone on break, that she will come back. I think she might have gone to pee, to get her dinner or buy some tampons. But she’s not here anymore so I turn my attention to the next poet. She is perhaps my age, with steely brown eyes and short curly brown hair, wisps of gray. She is thin and grafted, like her voice.
Like fields of grace, she reads. You sow your seed into our love. One grows, then another. Like ocean wines meddling your belly, our love is pissed into a toilet. After an hour, then another. In my belly grows another, and another, and another until sheer excess weighs on my bones. Your fingers stumble over our child, over my body. Stained with bruises, blooming yellow and purple flowers.
Love is pissed into a toilet, I like that.
A woman in a suit walks up to the microphone, asks if there are any other amateur poets who would like to read. I smile wetly, and step up to the small podium.
I’m sorry, sir, you must have a written copy of your poetry to be approved, she says.
I don’t have a written copy, I say.
A 20-year old with frizzy sandy hair replaces my spot on the podium, a crinkled paper in her hand. I shrug. My poem was only going to be, love like piss. Love likes piss. Love like piss. I thought it would be amusing.
Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s Karen, her face flushed and cheeks unevenly colored.
Listen, she says. I was wondering if you wanted to get a coffee or something, I’m off in ten minutes.
I smile. I just had coffee, I say. But I could buy you dinner.



~~~
This is June, Candy says.
Her face is clear and glossy with sweat. Brown straight hair tied in a small bun, a pencil behind her ear. A pale pink-and-white uniform and legs that seem soft as dough.
June is so used to me being here she knows exactly what I want. Isn’t that right, dear, Candy says.
June scribbles something on a pad. Three eggs, sunny side up. A cup of orange juice, she says.
And you, April? What are you having, Candy asks.
I’ll have the same.
The two curly-haired men by the side smile toothlessly. Candy, darling, I thought we were having a night on the town, one of them says.
Candy giggles. A girl’s got to eat. The darker skinned one slinks his arm around Candy’s angled shoulder. The pale one sits beside April.
This is your date, John, Candy says. She tugs at a curly dark hair of the man next to her. And this is Tony.
June takes long with the order.
John smiles now liplessly, every tooth glaring as if to bite his date. I do love your red hair, he says.
It’s a wig, April says. She’s not feeling well at all and the two guys Candy found seem terribly dull and not at all exciting. The smile dies from Candy’s lips and dribbles into a small puddle below.
John does not have the same reaction. His smile grows wider. I do love a woman who likes changing her looks every now and then, he says.
April stretches her lips, not quite a grimace and not a smile.
Let’s go to a club, Candy suggests, a red fingernail stroking Tony’s cheek. We’ll have some fine wine.


~~~

A button is missing from Karen’s striped shirt. I can see her belly button; it’s an outie and finely outlined. She is maybe only twenty-five. She has unbuttoned the top two buttons and a strap of white lace pokes out when you look at her profile. She’s flipping through a menu of a slightly claustrophobic restaurant. It is dim and purplish but I hear the food is good.
She wrinkles her nose. Some of this is expensive, she says. She points at the menu even though it is only facing her. See this stuffed ham and sautéed onions? It’s twenty-two dollars, she says.
Oh, that’s nothing, I say. Order whatever you want.
I’m not really all that hungry, she says.
I heard this place is good.
Twenty-two dollars for ham?
I paid twenty-two dollars for a whore once.
What?
I’m joking, I say.
The raisin-like flesh at the joints of her fingers smooth and wrinkle as she flexes her hands. Her skin is pink and parts of her hands are covered with dry white skin. She has a mother’s hands. I order a steak and a plate of rice with red beans. I order a bottle of red wine because it might taste good with the steak. She orders ham and sautéed onions, a seltzer.
Seltzer is just carbonated water and salt, I say.
She shrugs. I’m watching my weight.
Wine doesn’t have many calories, I say.
She smiles. Then I might have some.
For someone who claims she isn’t hungry, Karen eats the ham pretty fast. She even orders a piece of pie afterwards. The sautéed onions are untouched.
There’s some blanched cabbage next to my steak. I poke at a ribbon of vegetable for a minute. The bill is eighty-two dollars and seventy cents. I pull a hundred out of my wallet, which has been in my back pocket for days. I smile thinly and tell the waiter to keep the change.


~~~

June draws a wet wispy lock of hair behind her ear. She has two glasses of cold orange juice and a plate of eggs. The table is empty and the fluorescent lights hum like angels.
Mullaney isn’t here, he was never here.



~~~
White, white walls.
You wouldn’t expect a clean bathroom in this kind of place.
April swipes at the gaudy glitter on her collar bones. She wonders how she got tangled into this foolishness. She doesn’t like John, who has teeth like a piranha. There are so many it seems unnatural. She hates it that John and Tony are not drunk in some bar with empty wallets.
This is a game Candy plays. She dolls up April, takes her out with some men, get them drunk and steal their cash. Tony has eight shots of vodka swimming in his belly but he seems damn sober for a man who should be dying of alcohol poisoning. She peels off the thick black eyelashes off the top of her own.
In the mirror she sees Candy strut in, lingering by the doorway.
Are they drunk yet, April asks.
I’m working on it, Candy says.
Do they even know you’re a man?
No. No you did not just call me a man.
Genitally speaking you are.
Genitally speaking, that’s classic. Candy’s eyes narrow.
I’m not in the mood to hang out with these chumps all night. Can’t we just knock them over the head with a stick and be done with it?
What’s the rush, dear? It’s only ten.
I want to leave. Now, April says.
You want to leave, fine. Candy’s eyes are narrow slits now, mouth a pale red circle.



~~~
You only have so long to live, I say. But as you know, we’re always alone. There are always white walls, clear walls, black walls. A tumor could be kissing your brain, a cell of fat growing in your aorta. Imagine dying of the ebola virus. Do you think your mommy would kiss you goodbye?
Karen nods, silent and unblinking.
Do you believe in reincarnation, I ask.
Of course, she says. That cat there, that’s Hitler.
It slithers, pawing softly through garbage.
If you knew anything about reincarnation, you should know Hitler would come back as a cockroach, I say.
Oh, but he did. He came back and was crushed by an ordinary housewife. Because of this inauspicious short life as a cockroach the Brahma thought it apt he should come back as a little kitty cat.
It’s really simple, why we die. It’s a question no human has been able to answer for thousands and thousands of years. But it’s the wrong question we’re asking, I say.
What is the right question, she asks.
Simple, really. What we really need to know is why it’s easier to kill than to bring someone back to life.
Her lip curls. It isn’t easy to kill someone.
But it’s been done before. I smile. Have you seen someone being brought back to life?
She’s silent.
But I know the answer to that question. It’s a law of science, I say.
Are you a scientist?
No. But I obey the laws of science.
What is the law?
Entropy. Everything falls naturally to disorder and decay, because it’s easy. There are literally a million ways to die but only one way to be born.
I see, she says.
The way I see it, is this: It’s easier to kill you than to let you live because I have a message to send.
You are fucked up, she says.
There’s a glint of fear in your eyes. Why are you afraid? I smile. You told me you believed in reincarnation.



~~~
Where is Mullaney, June says.
The secretary is slow to look up. She peers at her over the top of her plastic-rimmed glasses. Her face is like a pie, round and brownish with white crusts.
Mullaney hasn’t been in for days, she says. We were going to file a missing persons report but we figure he’s got a family for that.
June looks incensed but says nothing.
The office is full of clicking and tapping, shadowy walls and thin gray carpeting.
White, white walls. Glass finely ribbed, like diamond fences.
When was the last time he was in, June asks.
June fourth, at eight-o-nine p.m. That’s what the reports say, the secretary says. She adds a sigh and runs a hand through her curly sand-colored wig.
June turns and leaves without saying anything.



~~~
I slip a sleek kitchen knife I stole from the restaurant into Karen’s belly. It’s still warm, like slitting the bellies of cats. An inch or two, not too deep. Vaguely pleased at the sight of her bowels spilling out. It’s not a very long cut, only two or three inches. Eyes like dead jelly.
Carefully opening the orifice I made with two fingers, I slip a ten dollar bill into it, like a tip in a mason jar.
My message will travel far, of course. It is on paper no one will burn, it will pass through creedless raceless faceless hands. Someone will find it before they pick up her body.
And you know, she never did answer that question about Kandinsky.



~~~
April arrives at the diner, unaccompanied and alone.
Her absurd wig. She would take it off but her hair’s thinning. Her makeup falling in streaks.
June, the waitress. She looks like she could be leaving or she just left. A smoke-stained white slip sprouts from one end of her starchy uniform. She has a black corduroy coat on. April remembers she didn’t pay for the eggs or the orange juice, she never got any at all.
Just one egg, she says. A slice of ham, and orange juice, she tells June.
Anything else, and June says this like a statement.
I’d like to pay for the food before. My friend, we left before it came. Sorry about that.
That isn’t a problem, June says. Curved brown eyebrows bright and semi-circular.
A sting sits on April’s forehead, like a freshly picked scab.
Twelve days, only twelve more days. She’d go to court on June eighteenth. She’d collect the money Kevin had left before he died from his poor senile mother. She is sure the old lady has a pension of some sort and wouldn’t need it.
June brings the food on a plate with geometric blue lines. She looks everywhere but at the orange juice still in her hand.
Are you looking for somebody, April asks.
June hesitates. Yes. My ex-husband.
What does he look like.
Tall, pink-skinned. Silver hair too old for his face. Yellow boots like a child’s sun.
Yellow boots. If I see him, I’ll let you know.
Thanks, she says.



~~~
Tony is chewing on Candy’s pale red lips. She backs away, laughing nervously.
You’re ruining my makeup, darling.
Where’s that friend of yours, Tony says.
She wasn’t feeling well. I sent her home.
Is that right. Well I suppose I’ll just have to share you with John, Tony says.
Candy laughs again, a mixture of nervousness and anger. I don’t think so, baby.
He’s dark-skinned and slurring his words. He is drunk as a mad cow but his movements are stunningly precise. He grabs her bony shoulder and bites the ends of her hair.
Oh, baby come on. We’re going to have fun tonight, he says.
She shoves him backwards in the chest with sharp red fingernails. You stop that now, she says.
She begins to wonder why she came up into the motel room in the first place. Tony rushes into the bathroom and hurls quickly into the toilet. It sounds like someone is shoving a large bone into his throat and suddenly the imagery isn’t so bad.
She walks out the door and into the club below, where the pulsating music is rhythmic and soothing as a child’s breath. She walks into John and his hundred teeth and she suddenly wishes she weren’t alone, that April were here.


~~~

Killing always makes me hungry, I suppose. If lives have to be wasted for my message, then so be it. They are wasted lives nonetheless, if I had never intervened. I’m making their lives nobler. They’ll be mourned and pitied and finally alone, as they should be.
Three or four every night. Very soon their bodies will be plastered all over the news and they’ll see my message then.
And of course, for this reason I am very much attracted to those who work in the restaurants. An Asian boy with lank hair and an awkward tongue leans on the counter, a white T-shirt with a hole in the arm. I’m considering ordering something called the Puu-Puu Platter but it doesn’t sound at all pleasant.



~~~
What was he like. Before the accident? April sips some tea.
He was fine. He was like everybody else, June says.
She’s so tired, so pale. She looks aged beyond what she should be but her bright brown eyes show some youth. April wonders how many lives she’s lived.
What was her name? April’s thumb stroking the cup like a kitten’s ear.
Hannah. Her name was Hannah.
And she was only seven.
Yes. Seven, says June.
A speck of dust seems to float between them and their eyes are focused on it. They are not looking at each other, but beyond each other.
April smiles, almost, but lowers her head. A habit of hiding her bad teeth. I remember what it was like to be seven, she says. Do you remember what it was like? A question for everything. After a while I stopped wanting to know. Knowledge can be so hurtful.
Ignorance is bliss. America’s freedom to pursue happiness, June says.
Where did it happen? April wants to know.
June almost speaks, her jaw twitching. A small sound, not a word but a vowel.
I---it happened at the park. She was alone, she says.
Alone?
He forgot to pick her up from school.
Who did it?
A man with a strange voice.


~~~

Get the hell away from me. Candy’s mascara is starting to run.
You slut. You know you were looking for a good time, Tony says. He charges at her blindly like a bull. Her dress is black and not red but that doesn’t matter. John’s leaning against the door, flashing his heaven’s smile.
I’m warning you, she says.
You and what army.
Me and my fucking army of mace, she says.
John clears his throat. We checked your purse before, darling. There’s nothing in there but face powder. He laughs. You going to face powder us to death?
Tony grabs her by the hair but he is surprised because it comes off so easily.


~~~

I had a brother, April says. He died a long time ago and my mother blamed herself for his death.
Oh, June says.
A child is a terrible thing to lose.
I’ve never had children, June says. He wanted another child after the accident but I told him I was sterile. She looks away, at everything else. He saved a lock of her hair. He brought it to the hospital and asked them to clone her.
And for a moment, the world stops. April hears breath and silence and then a few police officers come in with walkie-talkies. They buzz like an old man coughing up morning phlegm.
Where is Mullaney, they ask. Where is he?
June says she doesn’t know, that he left the insanity ward a few days after being admitted. She tells them that he took a lot of money with him and some yellow boots. A pen and a tan jacket. She told them he was admitted after carving a message into a dead woman’s bald head. She was dying of cancer and he found her on a grassy knoll.


~~~

Faggot, Tony says. His teeth scraping his lower lip.
He kicks Candy violently in the belly, in the head. Her eyes are bleeding tears and blood and it is enough to make John vomit. A clear fluid spills from her mouth. You, he says. He kicks her. Gay. Kicks her. Fucking. Kicks her. Faggot. Kicks her. Dog. Kicks her. Fucker. Kicks her. Father. Kicks her. Must. Kicks her. Have. Kicks her. Fucked. Kicks her. You. Kicks her. As. Kicks her. A. Kicks her. Little. Kicks. Faggot-boy. Kicks her. And Mommy. Kicks her. Must. Kicks her. Have. Kicks her. Watched.


~~~

It’s sad, really.
No one cares about the bodies. They’ll rot softly in the sun like raisins. They’ll pluck the money from their hard bellies and run off. This one I found in the alley. He has soft brown hair and a glittery black dress. Blood flows like life from the carotid artery and it makes half of his face red. The sleek stem bisecting his smooth back. I take more ten dollar bills, more messages. I put them in his ears and his mouth. Like Charon, the ferryman. A gold nugget in our tongues. I slit more orifices along his abdomen and write messages on his belly.
At some point you just have to face the fact that a lifetime’s worth of work isn’t going to get you anywhere. You can be a Pulitzer prize winner or a junkie, but you’re not going to live forever. No one’s going to be with you when you die because death is such a singular journey. Because death starts the moment you leave the womb.

 

 

Copyright © 2000 Margaret Li
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"