Clown in the Moonlight (4 page)

Linda looks like she's having fun but I see the real her rising to the surface, covetous, craving.
 
Her nails are like catclaw barbs.
 
She raises one hand to scratch at Gwen's face but I catch her wrist and draw her off.
 
I give Prill a little shove towards his girl.
 
Linda heaves a deep breath, about to let loose with a scream or a slur, but I smooth my lips over hers and swallow her rage.
 
In a few seconds she twists and twines in my arms and rubs her groin on mine.
 
She's not wearing panties tonight either.
 
It's not because of me.
 
Or Lowers's corpse.
 
I know she's got her heart set on fucking Ricky Kelso tonight.

The kids who are tripping wander around staring at their hands or the lights, laughing wildly, talking gibberish or crying because they see ghosts.
 
Nobody else notices them much.
 
Someone switches the tape and a heavy beat bangs on the walls and the mood of the house shifts.
 
The party gets a little angrier.
 

The liquor dwindles.
 
Mescaline, mushrooms, and acid pass from hand to hand.
 
Ten pizzas show up and the delivery guy at the door gets stiffed. The garbage pies slide into the crowd and everybody starts eating. He drifts around bitching, trying to collect money.
 
Someone yanks his hat off and flings it across the room.
 
He makes an effort to collect the boxes and pull slices from greasy hands.
 
Cheese and sauce hit the carpet.
 
He's considered a drag.
 
A couple of mutts punch him, lightly.
 
A couple of girls kiss him, sloppily.
 
The pizza boy begins to dance, clumsily.
 
Punks doing keg-stands topple into the wall.
 
Framed prints of Van Gogh's
Starry Night
and
Self-Portrait In Straw Hat
shatter.
 

They laugh.
 
The talk grows louder.
 
Lowers's name goes around the room again, passed from one to the next like a virus.
 
Everybody's getting sick.
 

One girl nearly drops into my arms, tripping, trembling as if suffering from chills brought on by pneumonia.
 
I hold her for a second before she shakes out of my hands.
 
Gwen brings her a shot of tequila and they giggle and French kiss.
 

At my shoulder Linda says, "Do you want her?"

"Which one?"

"Gwen, of course."

There's no right answer.
 
She doesn't care anyway.
 
Maybe she's just pawning me off.
 
I don't really mind.
 
I was expecting it even before our poisonous clench in front of Lowers's body.
 
We can't hold onto each other because we can't hold on to ourselves.

The breeze is stiff and the house groans.
 
Windows rattle.
 
It's raining again.
 
I need some air and slip through the throng to the back door and out into the wet yard.
 

It's everything my father would kill for.
 
For a bitter, ex-con, Neanderthal prick he's got a highly romanticized notion of what a happy home life should be.
 

This is his dream.
 
A four-bedroom house in an upper middle-class neighborhood on a full acre with a perfectly trimmed lawn and some mature landscaping.
 
He talks in his sleep.
 
He covets with a fury.
 
He hates the well-to-do, college-educated man.
 
He hides in dark alleys.
 
He keys cars.
 
He lurks behind garbage cans.
 
He waits in the bushes.
 
He watches the rich through their well-lit bay windows and jacks it to adolescent girls climbing out of the shower.
 
He destroys tiny tokens of a better life.
 
He takes a bat to fancy mailboxes.
 
He stamps on those little micro-lamps that border stone walkways.
 
He cuts Christmas lights.
 
He scatters lime around rose gardens.
 
He pisses in ponds and kills koi.

My old man, I listen to him confess in his stupors and I deny him the absolution he doesn't want anyway.
 
He hated being married but wanted a wife.
 
He hates me but wanted a son.
 
He jabbers on drunkenly night after night.
 
I imagine how his cellmate must've stuffed sock or cock in his mouth to shut him up.

I lean back against the stoop railing and smoke a cigarette.
 
The hot night is full of the smell of sex and sea and sap.
 
The sky is the color of a blacksmith's hearth.
 
Wind plies the trees and they sway and stoop.
 
Black birds are thick in the branches, leering intently.
 
Pellets of rain scratch at my face.
 
Torrents overburden the gutters.
 
The storm is back.
 
I imagine Gary Lowers, faceless, turning over and drawing up his blanket of dead leaves, and shuddering in loneliness beneath them.

I
finish my cigarette and peer in through the screen door.
 
Ricky Kelso walks into the living room and a hail goes up.
 
I know him the second I see him, even before they call out his name.
 
He basks in his minor glory, his dirty wild hair hanging in his dirty wild eyes.
 
He's tripping so hard on something he can barely stay on his feet.
 
Or maybe he's just high on his celebrity turn at murder.
 

I step inside.
 
I notice he's carrying Anton LaVey's
The
Satanic Bible
in his back pocket.
 
He leaves the paperback hanging about halfway out so everybody can spot the title.
 
Kids point.
 
Kids giggle.
 
Van Gogh stares in his straw hat, his hacked ear covered.
 
Baphomet, the Goat of Hell, glares back at everyone who looks.
 
Several kids turn away even as several other punks step closer.
 

From Ricky's jacket pocket hang a few bags of PCP.
 
I can see why Lowers reached out and snatched the drugs.
 
It's bait.
 
It's what Ricky wants you to do.

Gwen gives him a loving hug.
 
So does Prill.
 
So does the pizza guy.
 
So does Linda.
 
There's real emotion in her clench.
 
She's never grabbed me like that.
 
For a second I'm envious.
 
My mother used to hold me like that while my fever spiked and I raved.
 

My mom, she'd press her lips to my brow and say, "You won't always be sick."

But I have been, and so's Ricky.
 
His frenzied gaze roves the room.
 
His expression shifts depending on who he sees.
 
Lust, hate, greed, jealousy, resentment, even some true loving sentiment.
 
He has true friends here among his former classmates.
 
There's trust, laughter, long histories, shared fate.
 

When his eyes fall to me his face goes slack.
 
For an instant he looks like a child, innocent and full of wonder.
 
He tilts his head in surprise.
 
He frowns in puzzlement.
 
I'm probably doing the same thing.

He begins to move to me before he remembers who he is.
 

Who he is, what he's done, what his plans are, and exactly how he's going to wind up.
 
I start towards him.
 
The throng gets in the way.
 
That's their only purpose, to hold the two of us apart.

In Ricky's honor, the music shifts.
 
They put on heavy metal.
 
The lyrics are as inane as their conversation.
 
Hair band front men in eyeliner and headbands scream about Lucifer, Abomination, Leviathan, Pandemonium, the arch-dukes of the inferno.
 
Guys around me mimic their heroes, make the sign of the horns, hold up their lighters, and sing along.
 
More weed comes out.
 
More acid, hash, mescaline.
 
Somebody's made a liquor run.
 
My mouth waters for whiskey.
 
The house fills with the sweet stink of burning mary jane, and my head lightens a touch.

Linda is very stoned.
 
We make out in the corner for a few minutes.
 
Then she takes me by the wrist and leads me down the hall to Gwen's bedroom.
 
Gwen is already there, taking sips from a bottle of tequila, smoking a joint, naked in bed.

I
t's what I expect.
 
They fight over me in a silly, endless, half-hearted, territorial war of attrition.
 
They treat me like a pack mule that isn't moving up the canyon trail quickly enough.
 
They beat my back.
 
They dig their nails in, bite, wrench me one way and then the other.
 
They straddle and pound and chomp.
 
I'm bleeding from a dozen tiny wounds.
 
This has nothing to do with me.
 
After a while they begin to go at each other.
 
It starts off mean and eventually becomes tempestuous.
 
It would be a turn-on if it wasn't so predictable.
 
They love themselves, and they're so much alike that they love each other, in a self-hatred kind of way.
 
They're ravenous.
 
I watch for a while.
 
I participate when they let me.
 
They command each other to do filthier and filthier acts.
 
They demand I abuse them.
 
I comply.
 
I pulse.
 
I grow charred.
 
I can't degrade them deeply enough for their satisfaction.
 
Prill is at the door, listening.
 
He kicks at the knob twice but the lock holds.
 
What did he expect?
 
How could he not know?
 
The girls devour me.
 
I clamp my eyes shut and watch the shadows move on the other side of my burning red eyelids.
 
I see Gary Lowers's eyeless face turning in the rain to look at me.
 
He implores me to do something. I don't know what.
 
There's no hope for justice or redemption anymore, he'll never rest, and neither will I.
 
Maybe he just wants a grave, even a shallow one.
 
I could go back and bury him, but what's the point?
 
The dirt has rejected him.
 
The kids will make fun of him just the same.
 
I wuv my mommy.
 
I love my mother too.
 
I miss her more and more every day.
 
My father calls her name out in the night.
 
He slams his fists into the walls like he's beating her again, but she's finally beyond his reach.
 
It's slowly killing him, not having her anymore.
 
He sometimes stands in my bedroom doorway at dawn, but I'm always awake and ready.
 
He wants me dead or he wants me to kill him.
 
Maybe both.
 
I know I'm capable.
 
Gwen and Linda roll across the mattress.
 
They're on the floor, they're on the desk.
 
They're spread against the window.
 
They muffle their cries with each other's flesh.
  
Their nails groove the sill.
 
Branches flail in the breeze, wanting to scratch the girls, wishing them to bleed more deeply.
 
Gwen tumbles across the night stand and Linda pounces.
 
I join her.
 
The bitter taste of blood, tequila, pussy, and shit fills my head.
 
At one point I tear strips from the sheets and use them to bind the girls.
 
First one, while we work on her.
 
Then the other.
 
Until I stand above them, alone, rigid, in the darkness, all the light bulbs shattered.
 
We see each others' eyes by moonlight.
 
Their knotted gags are too tough to chew through.
 
It's not so different from what happened to Lowers, in its own way.
 
Sex transcends itself, a fusion of violence and sacrifice.
 
I stand, waiting, my pulse in tune with theirs, with Ricky's.
 
The walls throb with bass guitars and percussion.
 
Snatches of lyrics catch my attention.
 
I lean over the bed.
 
Linda asked if I'd ever killed anyone.
 
I hiss at her, "Yes."
 
I do things to them with whatever I can find in the desk drawer, in the closet, under the bed, with my body.
 
It's loud and merciless. By the time I cut them loose they're both sobbing, clinging to each other and quivering, sated, terrified and cowed, and I know I have to leave.
 
The storm wants inside.
 
Its force can't match my own.
 
Rain on the window scrawls out my past and hints about the future.
 
The glass trembles as if pecked by the beaks of crows. I imagine my father out there peeking in, wanting in.
 
The girls lick the running blood from each other.
 
They dress me before they dress themselves.
 
They thank me.