Penny Dreadful (12 page)

Then she had allowed Christian into her bed.

He shed his clothes in a hurry, like she might change her mind.

But there wasn’t going to be any sex, she told him.

Oh please, Goo. Give us a break.

She wondered if he was aware that he constantly referred to himself as a collective. If this was merely a peculiar side effect of the game. This apparent splitting, this fragmentation of selves. Because she often thought of herself and Goo as separate but equal.

Meanwhile, Christian had fiddled with his penis until it became hard and red. He showed it to her with creepy, boyish pride, as if he thought she couldn’t possibly say no to such a handsome sight. Manifest destiny, or something.

I am not Goo today, she said.

This made him whine.

Eve finally told him to jerk off, if he must. But not to come on her. And not to poke her or prod her with it, or casually try to slip it in while she was asleep. She wasn’t kidding. Christian had played with himself for a while, sulking. Then pretended to fall asleep.

That was a half hour ago. Maybe he really was asleep. Eve blew on his eyelids and he didn’t flinch. She squeezed his soft penis like it was a peach and she couldn’t decide if it was ripe. His penis was pretty long, when hard. About nine inches, he had told her once. He mentioned it casually, as if he were bored by the subject. But he had measured it, of course. Nine thrilling inches. It was too skinny and curved, however. It was what she imagined a dog’s penis might be. The way it stabbed painfully into her uterus, sharp and bony.

Christian now began to snore.

She hesitated, then reached out and touched his hair. It was very confusing, this relationship. She didn’t know if she liked him at all. But when she was Goo, she loved him. She wanted his children. It was a game, okay. She was playing a character. Eve stroked his fine black hair and her fingers caught in a funny tangle. His hair was matted with something. She worked her fingers through it and they came away sticky and brown. This was dried blood.

Eve closed her eyes.

Griffin appeared through wide sliding doors that literally purred open, cool and silent. It wasn’t bad but a really sinister whooshing noise would have been much more effective. He wore a glossy Italian suit the color of bloodwine and it seemed he had begun shaving his head since I last saw him as his skull was now the same pale creamy pink as my own bare ass.

Are you going bald? I said.

I am bald.

Yes. I can see that.

Griffin extended his hand. There was a small tattoo on the inside of his wrist, like a black coin.

Was your hair falling out, though?

Yes, he said. It was like plucking feathers from a dead chicken. He shrugged. I decided to shave it instead. The girls seem to like it.

I’m sure.

Griffin stood there, unbending. His hand still hanging between us like a knife and a knife given as a gift will always bring bad luck. I stood up and shook his hand and the contact was cold but weirdly lacking pressure. Griffin’s eyes drifted to focus on my eyebrows and I wondered if that was just a lawyer thing. Or did he truly want to avoid the eyes. I stared back at him, smiling with some reluctance.

Griffin bowed his head slightly and I hesitated, then touched the man’s scalp. Oily and hot, almost feverish.

What do you want? said Griffin.

Oh, well. I’m back in town. Thought I would say hello.

Griffin smiled the smile of a gorilla, a chimp. He showed way too many teeth and a ridge of pale gray gums. That’s funny, he said. That’s a killer.

I shrugged, uneasy. Why is it funny?

Because you don’t like me, said Griffin.

No. Not at all.

The receptionist was staring at us throughout this exchange, her lips parted. A bright glow of sweat in the thin blond fuzz along her cheekbones. Eyes glazed and blue, she chewed on her tongue and she looked mesmerized, as if she was home alone, watching a little soft porn on cable. Griffin flicked a finger at her and she abruptly began to type.

Nice, I said.

Let’s go in my office, Griffin said. I have champagne, of a kind.

Moon:

Moon was parked on a swiveling stool at Lulu’s Dough-nut Shoppe. His throat was killing him, literally. It felt like he had swallowed a mouthful of glass and what the hell happened back there.

He had provoked McDaniel, apparently. The motherfucker had a tight little ass, an irritating accent. Bad teeth. And very fast hands. Moon sighed and shifted his own ass around, trying to get comfortable. His hefty buttocks fairly melted over the sides of his stool. Moon knew what his father would say. Old man Moon would suck on his false teeth and swear that McDaniel would be speaking German right about now if it wasn’t for us. And learning to like it. Maybe so, but that does me no good. He wondered if McDaniel was up to something nefarious or just fucking with him. Moon realized he was an easy target these days, what with his poor work habits and his body odor problems. Anyway. Jimmy Sky was nobody’s favorite cop, but he didn’t kill people. He especially didn’t kill other cops.

Moon had a headache. He would worry about it later. And he would watch and wait for a chance to pay McDaniel back for this sore throat. He would wait years, if he had to. One day the motherfucker would fall asleep in the wrong place and wake up with his hat on fire and his hands cuffed to his feet.

Okay, then. He wanted to get drunk and concentrate on his breakfast. He had been coming to Lulu’s every morning without fail for years. Lulu was long dead, or never existed. Wiley, a man who claimed to be her husband or stepbrother, ran the place now. He was a grumpy little man who was deadly serious about doughnuts. He wasn’t interested in anything else. Wiley always wore strangely colorful clothes. He was a peacock. Today he wore a purple T-Shirt with black-and-white pants and yellow shoes. He was a freak, maybe. But he made the best doughnuts in the city. And he spoke very elegant English in a snotty voice, like a college professor.

Moon had once asked him about the inexplicable hyphen in the word “doughnut.”

Wiley had merely shrugged. He said that Lulu had always been too liberal with punctuation, as if this had been an irreversible condition, something he had learned to live with.

Moon stared down at his place. Four fat doughnuts, arranged like the face of a clock. Blueberry at twelve o’clock. Maple swirl at three. Cinnamon at six and honey glazed at nine, to clean the palate. He drank coffee with a splash of bourbon and chased it with concentrated orange juice. He didn’t smoke before noon, or he tried not to.

Dead cop with throat ripped out. Like a wolf had done it, a wild dog.

Moon finished his coffee and took a pull of bourbon straight from the pint. He lit a cigarette and noticed that his palms were sweating, they were dripping. It had been quite a while since he had been drunk like this, in public. He felt a stab of something like guilt. What the hell. He had no wife, no therapist to answer to. He was a cop, by God. And he was the only cop in the place. His fellow officers didn’t care much for Wiley and his fruity clothes.

Black eyes and crooked nose and a face forgotten already. Hands in his fucking pockets.

Moon wiped his hands with a napkin and fought down a mouthful of bile and he knew he was out of shape, okay. It took a little strength, a little staying power to get drunk so early in the day. Intestinal fortitude. Moon swabbed out his mouth and tongue with the sweaty napkin and tossed it aside in disgust. He had the intestines of a little old lady. He was irregular. He had maybe one successful bowel movement a week, and it was pretty painful. It was rough. The bathroom was his personal torture chamber, lately. It was like he was passing a fucking stone in there.

This was a lot of bullshit, though.

Moon wasn’t worried about his bowels, or his own guilt. He could shake off guilt like it was nothing, like a coat of morning dew. Moon would rather have a belly full of guilt than a touch of the flu, any day. But now he was distracting himself from the truth. And the truth was, he was a little worried about Poe. The guy was his friend, yeah. But he was a freak. He was purely section eight. Poe was a delusional fuckup, okay. He had been bounced off the cops for being too schizophrenic and was suspected but never implicated, never charged in connection with the shooting death of his wife.

And most recently he somehow got himself mixed up in the alleged transportation and sale of his own illegally harvested organ. That was a good one, wasn’t it. That was a humdinger.

There were sixteen motherfuckers just like Phineas Poe, hanging around the methadone clinic and the homeless shelter right now. Sixteen guys with no money, no cigarettes. Sixteen guys with their brains spilling out of their skulls one teaspoon at a time.

And what did he do first thing this A.M.

Moon rubbed his belly and thought about it.

Oh, well. Nothing much. He gave the bastard a handful of false identities and a lump of confiscated coke and turned him loose on a missing persons case that didn’t officially exist. He could only wonder what sort of mayhem would come of that.

Wiley glanced up from his crossword. He cleared his throat politely and licked his lips, as if it was a great effort to speak. What ails you, Sheriff? he said.

Nothing, said Moon. I feel just like a king.

You have hardly touched your doughnuts.

Moon stubbed out his cigarette and plucked the blueberry doughnut from his plate. His stomach heaved momentarily, but he ate the thing in three quick bites.

Jimmy Sky, where was Jimmy Sky.

And five minutes later Moon crashed out of Lulu’s, the glass door bending before his bulk and splashing onto the sidewalk. He broke the fucking door, shattered it. He was probably bleeding. There were tiny white fragments of glass on his arms and shoulders. It was in his patch of hair. Fucking hell. He inspected himself for cuts and scratches, cursing the door. The thing must have been defective. He turned to look at Wiley. And Wiley was nonplussed. In fact, he was turning orange about the ears and neck. He looked like one unhappy tangerine.

Hey, said Moon. Hey, Wiley.

Wiley stared at him, disbelieving. You are a menace, he said. A danger to yourself and others.

Moon pulled out his wallet, a bulging chunk of leather that smelled of feet.

He knew that it smelled of feet because he had sniffed it, just the other day. He had been trying to isolate a putrid, cheeselike odor that kept wafting from his body. He was sure it must be coming from his crotch, from the sweat and funk and decay of his package. But he had been sitting at a stoplight at the time and he could hardly bend over far enough to smell himself, what with the steering wheel in the way.

Moon smiled to himself. He couldn’t bend over that far if Yoda himself was sitting on his neck, croaking a lot of Jedi nonsense at him. Luminous being we are…yeah. He might be luminous, on a good day. But he wasn’t too fucking limber. Then it occurred to him. His wallet was pressed up against his ass all day, absorbing his unpleasant juices, his various gasses. The funk had to be coming from his wallet. And at the next red light, Moon yanked it out and had a good whiff and almost threw up right there.

Now he flipped the stinking thing open, taking care to keep it well away from his face. Sixteen dollars. Hardly enough to replace the door of a dollhouse. And his credit cards were in ashes, lately.

He pondered a moment.

Tell you what, said Moon. I’ll write up an armed robbery report and your insurance will cover it, no problem. You could get a better door out of the deal.

Oh, sure. And they won’t hesitate to cancel my policy.

Hmm. That’s no fucking good.

You’re drunk, aren’t you. Since when do you indulge on duty?

Moon grunted at him. I’m thinking.

The forecast is for rain, said Wiley. Thunderstorms, you bastard. You have ruined me.

Okay, said Moon. How about this. I broke the door myself.

Wiley frowned, irritated. You did break it.

Yes. But I broke it in the line of duty, you see. In my zealous

pursuit of a purse snatcher. You can bill the department. Okay? Tell them it was lead glass, stained glass. Whatever. Tell them it was a five-thousand-dollar door if you want.

Griffin’s office was about what I would expect. Cool and sterile, with uncomfortable iron furniture. A thick, silent carpet that was such a powdery light blue that it disappeared like the far end of the sky. The sky merging with clouds. Griffin casually uncorked a magnum of something called the Pale. The label looked suspiciously postmodern, with bright ruthless colors.