Cold-Eyed Triage Nurses In High-Heeled Boots Manhattan spring night. A woman walks out of a brownstone on East 80th and walks toward Central Park. She is dressed in a clear incitement to rape: a black leather mini-dress polka dotted with brass eyelets, long lean black boots and about 15 lbs. of heavy metal junk jewelry. She's wearing disco makeup and a spindle top hairdo. Obviously some rich girl who has dressed up like a whore for a costume party. She has an impeccable upper class manner, the kind the English have forgotten and the Americans never learned. She is about 28 and blindingly beautiful. Her name is Victoria and, right now, Her face has an expression of carnivorous amazement. As she passes an apartment block, a man steps out of an alley labelled SERVICE ENTRANCE. His name is David, one of the handsome Black Irish, but oddly bookish looking. He's trying hard to look like a rocker, but his leathers are too expensive, it's all a costume like hers. This is beginning to have the quality of a sexual fantasy. He carries a heavy leather shoulder bag and, at the moment, he has the determined expression of an alley cat about to kill something small and defenseless. He follows Victoria along 80th Street and into the park. She looks back once and he lets the distance between them increase. She walks along a concrete path up over a hill in back of the museum, perhaps a 100 yards in front of him. As he follows her, 2 UNHOLY LOOKING 3rd WORLD muggers bounce out of the bushes, muttering jubilantly, and begin to slouch after her with malignant intent. They do not have the wit to look behind them. David steps off the concrete onto the grass so that his boots wont make a sound. He shifts his shoulder bag to his left hand so that it wont make a noise by slapping against him. He pulls brass knuckles out of a back pocket and begins to run, a low crouching run. He's good at it. He's had some kind of training because he does all this soundlessly. He has no fighting ability. He's steady enough, he's had all the training there is, he just has no talent at it. But it doesn't matter, against an untrained man it works just like it does in the movies. He comes up behind the 2 muggers and still they haven't noticed a thing. He does a basic karate move, known as 'a skipping reverse punch', and catches the 1st Mugger in the back rupturing his spleen with his brass-knuckled fist. The 1st Mugger falls over with a sharp intake of breath. The 1st is down before the 2nd has turned. David kicks him in the knee and then reverse punches him in the adam's apple with the brass knuckles and the entire weight of his body behind it. The 2nd Mugger is gone like a blown candle. It's all over in a second, but Victoria has turned around in response to the sound effects. With a theatrical look of horror, She begins to run. Through plan or panic, she runs deeper into the park. David curses wearily and takes off after her. She's a jogger, but not a sprinter and he runs much faster than she does. She hears his steps getting closer and She dives in among a thicket of trees. She tries playing motionless, hoping to be invisible in the dark, but they're both panting by now. She cant control Her breathing and he is tracking her by the sound. She hears him coming closer and grunting with triumph. They play hide and seek among the trees. There's something oddly childlike about this, but her eyes are wide and rolling with terror. She doesn't have the presence of mind to scream or, perhaps, she's just too out of breath. Then David steps from out of the darkness behind her and throws an arm around Her neck. "Open. Open your mouth." Obediently, she opens her mouth, perhaps, a little too wide, a little too fast, and he inserts a gag. But something is a little wrong. It's a soft rubber strap gag of the kind sold in sex shops for people who like this kind of thing. he buckles it tightly at the nape of her neck. She wriggles in his grip, She gurgles and stamps her foot indignantly, but She offers no particular resistance. Perhaps, she's too frightened. Then he grips her by the shoulders and slowly guides her down to the grass. He pulls her hands over her head and fastens them together behind a small tree. But he uses fleece lined leather handcuffs. This is beginning to look suspiciously over prepared. he checks that he has her fixed securely then climbs on top of her and languorously rapes her. When he's done with her body, he opens his shoulder bag, takes out a bottle of Margot and opens it with a cork screw. He sets it to one side then gestures for her to turn her head. She does and he removes the gag and handcuffs, tidily putting them away in his bag. She doesn't make a sound. She sits up, elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. Her hair has come undone and it falls over her face. He sits staring at her in silence. She's not about to move. She's not about to say anything. For the 1st time, he doesn't know what to do next. Not worried, not guilty, just baffled. "Are you alright?" She's still panting slightly. She says nothing. She won't look at him. her only reaction is to brush some hair away from her face, but it immediately falls forward again. He's standing there in the starlight like a gravy spot in a lace doily. Growing up the only beautiful women he saw were in magazines. Of course, real women dont look like that. Only, this one does. She's fantasies made flesh and he has no defense against her. Male sexuality does not respond to messages; it responds to signals and, the hornier you are, the blurred the signals can be. They show this with pigeons. He starts out making love to a stuffed pigeon, then a block of wood. Finally, he's doing his mating dance to a shadow on a wall. I'm sure you've all done that one. But this time the signals are clear, in sharp focus point blank in front of him. He has no more choice of how to react than a stop light has about turning red. "Victoria, are you alright?" "Why did you open the wine first?" "It needs to breathe." "And I dont?" "I just work here." "That is true." He holds up the wine. "Want some?" (NO ANSWER) Your mouth must be dry. (NO ANSWER) You want to tell me what's wrong? (NO ANSWER) I have this recurrent fantasy about doing a slow tango with a mountain lion wearing blue lipstick and violet eye shadow." "I dont believe you." "Just trying to start a conversation." "I believe that." "Then tell me what's wrong". � "Nothing. It was perfect. All the little surprises, all the moments when it was almost out of control, everything that makes it real. More detailed than I ever could have imagined it." "But?" "You were supposed to leave me tied to the tree, all night abandoned." "You didn't want that. You wanted to pretend that it was going to happen, but you didn't really want it. Not really." "Artists must take risks." "But they sacrifice other people, not themselves." She opens her shoulder bag and takes out 2 wine glasses wrapped in tissue. She opens a cosmetic bag. There's a pill bottle of ups and one of downs. Sighing deeply, she swallows a down. David takes that as a personal rejection. "That part makes sense. But I believe that for this to be great art you must feel that you have something personal at stake." "Your theories aren't my problem. No, your theories are my problem." She's about to answer when he hears something we dont. He gestures her to be quiet, that someone is coming. He reaches into his shoulder bag and takes out a very ratty looking .38 belly gun. Clearly, he's brought everything but a Boy Scout Manual. Victoria sighs, "Oh, it's just lovers". "No, they're coming too slow, they expect trouble." His voice had changed, deeper., more confident, almost dreamy. 3 more muggers bounce out of the bushes. "You dont want to get hurt, right?" "That's right." David shoots him through the head with the .38. It's an explosive bullet and pieces come off his head like petals from a flower. The other 2 muggers turn and run. David unapologetically shoots them in the back. "We better go, the police will be here," she says, primly. "They can't tell where the shots were coming from, not with all the echoes off the buildings." "Let's go home." "Yes." They walk back the way They came. The left shoulder of her dress has been torn and the bra strap broken. Her left breast falls out. She tucks it back in then leans against him to hold it in place, arms around each other's waists. There are 4 cop cars with whirling bubble-gum machines. They're parked around the 2 muggers he'd knocked out. Their faces are covered. Apparently they're dead. A cop shines his flashlight on David and Victoria. He sees an upper east side couple and loses interest. Victoria hides her face in David's neck. "How horrible!" she says. � "You shouldn't be in the park at night, it's too dangerous," says the cop. � "Thank you, Officer. I keep telling her that, maybe now she'll believe me." They walk away but, after they get 20 yards, Victoria begins to giggle. She clings to him tighter and buries her face against him, but then he begins to giggle too. Then her laughter exploded out of control. The cops hear it and turn to stare. 3 cops snap their flashlights on them. her left breast has fallen out again. David pushes her away and slaps her very hard. "It's alright, Officer, she was just getting hysterical at the sight of..." He gestures at the corpses and two of the three flashlights are turned off. "The park closes at midnight. You're trespassing. Bring her over here, I want to talk to her." "Please, Officer, she's hysterical already." "Alright, but get her home and do it now." His flashlight goes out too. David and Victoria walk out of the park onto 5th Ave. She's rubbing her cheek and looking at him thoughtfully. Clearly, She has an idea. As always, it will be a very bad idea. He groans. "Can it wait until morning? It's late and I'm very tired." NO ANSWER "Did you get enough for the 1st chapter?" "I'm writing it in my head, but it's always the same, it just isn't Naked Lunch." "Try Faulkner, he's big on sexually dysfunctional decadent southern aristocrats. Only you're better at it." "I cant stand to read him. I always her his voice and he's speaking a private language of men that no woman can possibly understand, that no woman has any right to listen to. It's like I walked into an old time Memphis bar, the kind that has a sin saying :Booths for Ladies, and I heard someone telling the most wonderful stories in this slow growling southern drawl. And then everything stopped and they all turned to look at me and wondered what the hell I was doing there. And there was nothing for me to do except leave" "Well, yeah, but try thinking of it this way. There's a baseball pitcher and his name isnt Vida Blue or Dizzy, it's Irving Kolodna and he has so little charisma that even his wife cant remember what he looks like. And he had broken every pitching record in the book but no one noticed or if they did they ascribed his records to someone else. Anyone in his right mind would have given up, but not him. He loved the game so, he started doing things like loading the bases with none out and getting 3 and 0 behind on the batter just to show that he could strike out the side with 9 consecutive pitches" � Victoria smiles sidewise like Minnie Mouse "What's that got to do with Faulkner?" � "Making things difficult form himself, just to keep himself interested, something like you. Her face transformed with delight and she pointed and said "Oh, look." but there was nothing in front of her except the bitter sleek darkness of 5th Avenue at night. Then she turned around 180 degrees and pointed back into the park. And there was Faulkner. All 5'2" of him with a Faulkneresque iron grey haircut and a Faulkneresque iron grey moustache, walking along in a Faulkneresque pose, eyes down, hands clasped behind his back, intensely preoccupied, totally unaware of his surroundings. All of which was quite bad enough, but horribly he had his 2 hound dogs with him, one white, one black and white spotted. It was Faulkner and his dogs looked intensely preoccupied too. The 3 of them walking down the over lit esplanade that fronted the band shell. All of which is merely an impossible coincidence except that Faulkner had been dead 30 years. And ghosts are like that, perfectly ordinary except they couldn't possibly be where you see them and always in the exact center of your field of vision. Well, yes, it could have been a Faulkner groupie who'd gone a little too far, but David had prowled the park for years; he new all the park characters: the old man and woman who wore only purple and rode bicycles down the bridle path collecting horse maure for thir garden, the fat little black man who had 20 cats and had taught them to march in formation and all the rest. This was something entirely new. And...if it were a performance, he'd be watching from the corner of his eye to see what reaction he was getting. But he didn't seem to know they were there. David thought this over for a full half second and said, "Hold on to my hand tight and dont let go no matter what happens" "Shouldn't we talk to him?" "Kind of tactless to remind him that he's dead. He might get pissed and, anyway, if that's what I think it is, he couldn't see or hear us." "Well, yes, but we could say something. What if he answered?" � "We'd spend the rest of our lives trying to convince someone that it really happened. This way we don't even really believe it ourselves." "So what?, you had a cheap date." He stops and stares at her in astonishment. He does a lot of that. She keeps walking. He keeps staring for a moment, then walks quickly after her. He looks back into the park. Faulkner is still well lit and perfectly ordinary. He needs a shave. David turned back and walked after her. The two wine glasses sit by the tree, one standing half full, the other on its side and empty. � An angel in a stiff terra cotta robe floats by on an updraft. Her face is an unhealthy yellow and her wings are news-print grey. She holds a srtone tower in her arms. It's Saint Barbara, the patron saint of thunder, artillery and the cancelled space program. She's been de-canonized and her cult suppressed. You can't blame her for being pissed.
Copyright © 1999 Angel Obregon |