Hollow Dolls, The (20 page)

After
he emptied the bottle into his gut, Robert Dentowne turned and looked right at
her. 

Her
body locked. Her fingers jammed in between the wooden slats of the barn holding
on.

Out
of nowhere Dentowne hurled the empty bottle and it flew end-over-end toward
Melanie. She panicked and held her arms up to protect her face.

Melanie
teetered backward and looked in between the slats catching one last glimpse.

Cloe
had her head up and her eyes glistened.

“Cloe!”
 screamed Melanie.

She
fell backwards.

Darkness
and cold air whooshed by Melanie and all she wanted was to die with her.

Melanie
Googled
‘Seido dojo Vancouver, BC’ and found one on the south side. They’d have to go
and sign up. In the bedroom she jumped on the bed and bit the bum of this sexy
little girl it seemed she’d just met but had known forever.

Winnie squealed like a piggie.

Melanie laid her head on Winnie’s bum and looked at the ceiling.

“My session with Georgy made me remember something. Alejandra. She
was there that day. You know the combine thing at that farm?”

“She was? Really?”

“She rescued me in a way. I don’t know why I feel so drawn to her.
Like family.”

“Tell me!” said Winnie.

Melanie turned again and gave Winnie a love bite on the bum cheek.

“I love your butt so much I can’t think.”

“Aww...”

“You sent me a memoir entry about the farm,” said Winnie. Alejandra
took you away from Peter that day. He was using you, selling you for sex.”

Melanie tried to remember it all.  Winnie rolled over and got on
top of her. She bit Melanie’s bum cheek and blew hot air through her jeans then
slid her hand in between her legs and massaged her. Melanie giggled and then
moaned.

“Get undressed!” commanded Winnie.

Winnie could get away with playing the top easily. Mel wasn’t
around. Winnie pulled the long black hair and crop out of the bottom dresser
drawer. Melanie watched her put the hair on and melted inside.

“Alejandra,” she murmured.

After a shower Winnie had fallen asleep. Melanie drank a water
with a few ritalin and went for a walk on Davie Street. People were burning off
hangovers, girl watching, guy watching. Down the block, Primrose Boutique
offered racks of summer prints, Connie’s Comix & Gear with shelves of books
out front and a LGBTQQIAAS sign in the window.

 “Dykes and fairies and queers, oh my,” whispered Melanie.

Davie Street had changed over the years. Just then, something else
came back. The last time she was down here it was it was with Lexa Marsh. They
were on ecstasy with fake ID’s. They went to SkyBar on Davie first. Then they
they’d spent the rest of the night touring around Vancouver streets finding
parties.

Melanie wandered down along the waterfront Melanie took in the high-rises
and sand, seagulls and fries, skater boys and roller-bladers.

Memories weaved in and out between the people who walked by. She
used to skate board and dance hip hop. Her and Lexa. The band. Everyone that
passed by seemed to remind her of the next thing.

Two girls approached, one with a t-shirt that said, ‘S W I S H’

Melanie stopped.  “Lexa!”

The girl turned.

Melanie stepped up. She was puzzled that the girl didn’t recognize
her.

“Excuse me?” The girl’s face was blank.

They both turned and walked away. Melanie picked up the pace,
feeling embarrassed and made it into the park.

Ok, why not?  A solo brunch.

“Kir Royal with Steak & Eggs, medium rare.” she said, just as
the waiter arrived.

Today Melanie wore a preppie chic vintage 80’s yellow and black
plaid jumper dress, black leather jacket, and Alexander McQueen knee high black
boots.

It was a decent place with glass table tops and linen napkins. Melanie
looked around at the  couples and the few tables of business people. She saw
two men across the room sipping iced tea and recognized him immediately. It was
Jack!

She walked across the restaurant to their table.

“Jack!”

She snuggled in beside him on the bench seat and hugged him.

The man smiled.

“Jack. You’re here in real life!”

“I believe I am in real life.”

The two men laughed, looked at her and smiled.

“I think you’ve got me mistaken for someone else,” he said.

“Jack, what’s going on?” said Melanie. “It’s me, from the island.
Your picture, you snuck it into the margarine container with the pills...
Didn’t you?”

The man looked puzzled. “I’m sorry Miss.  I really wish I could
help. I guess I have a twin.”

She touched his cheek. She was sure it was him right in front of
her. The man from the island. She knew now that she’d loved him so many years
ago.

The men continued waiting and watching the lovely girl who’d just
sat at their table. She was clearly thinking things through, wondering what
sort of mistake she’d made.

Mel became confused. How did she even know about the picture? She
couldn’t remember any of the details suddenly and it all seemed like another
huge embarrassment. She blushed, apologized and walked back to her table. She knew
that she was off again in the stratosphere. Dazed and confused. Melanie paid
her bill and took the order to go.

When she arrived back, she searched the suite, taking bites off of
the steak she had in her hand. She realized that Winnie was gone again. She’d
taken her laptop and all her druggie stuff. Melanie decided Winnie must have
gone off with Alejandra again. She felt abandoned.

Rather than sulking any more, she put on some jeans and drove to
the dojo on the south side. Out front the sign read, ‘The Umbilicus Center’ in
pale yellow bordered by ornately detailed orchids with shades of purple and
yellow pistils and stamens. Serene on the outside, crunchy pain on the inside.
Just what she needed.

She met her new sensei, Todd Brady and set up a workout schedule.

Back home Melanie wrote in her journal for a few hours and emailed
it to Winnie. She wished Winnie to be safe and even considered praying. It
seemed ridiculous. Was she a praying type? Praying mantis. Stage lights.
Club Lick
.
She was naked. More pieces of the impossible puzzle it seemed. She dozed on the
Sears-o-pedic mattress in the bedroom, drifting in and out.

She knew that she needed to go for her audition with Scott. Some
faint shouts and car engine revs murmured from down on Davie. Scott was there
in her mind. Jack too. If she had to pick—she couldn’t. She tucked a pillow
between her legs and hugged the other one. Melanie wanted Jack there with her
now. He could tell her what was real or not. Who was the man at the restaurant?
He was so like the man in the picture and the memories she had of the island. A
night together with him...

Davie Street murmured away in the distance. Stars twinkled. Most
people were at home watching television bug-eyed while denying their apprehension
of the approaching Monday morning grist mill. On the dark horizon Melanie saw the
giant prole shadow wheels rolling slowly toward the city.

Melanie
woke the next morning and quickly wrote in her journal about a dream.

I
was sitting on top of Alejandra. It was dark. Her body was identical to my own.
When I touched any part, I knew it. I had a knife and plunged it into her chest.
She didn’t scream or yell. I kissed her and told her I loved her. Then she
kissed me back.

She
said, “Why have you done this Melanie? I loved you.” Then she held me close. I felt
the sticky blood between us—we were having sex while she was dying. Then I
woke.

She
sprinkled Nescafe instant from a complimentary packet and watched brown octopus
ink explode in the clear glass mug. Cremora white powder coagulated on top. She
stirred the chemicals. Even in boiling water it still stuck like cum to the
brown stir stick. Melanie licked it off. It reminded her home and Marlene’s
powdered milk. Melanie used to eat the dry powder. It tasted vaguely like ice
cream.

~*~

Vancouver – June,
2002

Melanie
sat quietly at the old sixties kitchen table with its pale blue top and white
metal legs. Her bum and between her legs were still sore from what they’d done
last night. The bit of remaining baby fat on her bare leg always pressed into the
split in the vinyl that covered the chair. She’d lift her bum because it was
sore and because the vinyl was so sticky.  It felt weird being stuck to it.
Then the split would pinch her skin as she lifted.

Melanie
traced the scratches in the paint on the table’s leg with her big toe and the wild
cards passed through her mind.
Four, Jack...the Queen of Spades..

 “This
milk tastes funny.”

Melanie
said it aloud without thinking. She hoped her mother hadn’t heard. She wanted
to tell someone though that it tasted yucky.

From
the living room Marlene yelled, “You finish that cereal and get dressed for
school right now before I come in there!”

Melanie
never wanted her mother to ‘come in there.’

Marlene
had her feet up on the coffee table. The doctor had told her to sit with her
feet raised if she could, since she was standing on them all night tending bar.
She’d made good tips last night at The Ramada. Bill the owner liked her. They
even had the occasional fling in the supply room. He was married and definitely
not a prospect. She blew the smoke out of her mouth in disgust and sipped the
rest of her Bloody Mary, and while she was bent over she stabbed the butt into
a space age looking green and black sixties ashtray on the coffee table.

“Mom,
I’m ready.”

Melanie
knew when to be a good girl. If she could please her mother, then she might be
in a good mood when she got home from school. It was only a while till Marlene
went off to work, which meant she was home free to watch television and have
popcorn with Stacy the sitter.

Stacy
often had her boyfriend Steve over and they would watch TV together. It was
getting to be like they had their own little family. Steve would play crazy
eights with Melanie and let her pick the wild cards.

“Okay,
you get home right after school and not a minute late,” yelled Marlene, hearing
the knock on the door.

The
school was five blocks and Melanie walked with her friends. Marlene didn’t know
that Steve always walked Melanie home safely in the afternoon. Melanie had told
Steve about some man that scared here once and after that he insisted on
walking her home. It would be their little secret. Steve knew that Marlene
would get pissy and take it out on Melanie for not telling her so what else
could he do, someone needed to protect the little kid. If Steve had only known
the truth about Peter.

~*~

Breakfast
arrived and Melanie munched on a Swiss cheese omelette with rye toast. Winnie sent
her another memoir chapter. She tracked Winnie on the GPS tracker software. She
was at a place called The Dodson.

She
clicked back to the memoir entry Winnie had sent.

The Man-Rabbit WT-3

Winnie ran away from Mel, all the way back to her
room on Hastings Street. When she stopped, she bent over to catch her breath.
Hands on her knees, she heard Timmy’s voice while she felt her heart under her
shirt.

“Hey, you ok?”

“Yup,” said Winnie, straightening up and tugging on
her skirt.

Her leather jacket resisted and as she peeled it off
the arms turned inside out. In the mirrored glass at Potter’s Mission she saw her
nipples showed faint pink flesh tones that stuck to the greyish tee shirt. She
didn’t need Goth makeup anymore. She had home-grown racoon eyes and skin as
white as a reaper’s child.

Winnie ruffled her hair. There was enough residual
gel, sweat and Timmy’s cum in her hair along with days and days of city dirt that
it was at its curliest. She tugged on a few of the dark semi-dreaded locks that
arced out from a central nest of hair like alien antennae.

Timmy held a crumpled ball of tin foil up in front
of her as she gazed at herself in the window. He rolled it around between his
fingers then motioned with his eyes toward the entrance of The Dodson.  She
followed him pulling the arms of her jacket right side in. Sitting on the
bottom stair, Timmy pulled out a glass pipe and dropped a twenty dollar chunk
of urine-color crystalline into the bowl. He gave Winnie first go. She drew
long and hard as Timmy held a flame to the end of the pipe and the piece of
rock inside sizzled. Her lungs burned, the smoke squeezed patrols into her
blood. Keepers of the keep. They whirred to her brain, killed off anything that
looked suspiciously normal. She watched him finish it. Timmy’s freckles
multiplied, got redder against his pale Irish skin. She heard the tones in his
lungs. He was good. No worries. No bad wolf there. She exhaled. They both
leaned back on the stair.

Upstairs Winnie changed then leaned back against the
wall next to Pooh Bear. She had put her white dress on, nothing else, and was
drawing lines on her thigh with her butterfly knife. Blood trickled and she
touched her finger to it and licked it.

“Timmy. Cum on me.”

“I can’t just cum on you, I’m not even hard.”