Penny Dreadful (4 page)

Gulliver, he said. His hand was dry, with blunt fingernails.

Hello, she said. My name is Goo.

The Redeemer sipped delicately from his glass of Pale. He wiped at his lips, which were thin and rubbery and morbidly prehensile in appearance. His mouth was ugly but no doubt fantastic when it came to oral sex, she thought. A man could be very popular with lips like that. He nodded and rolled his eyes as if he could hear her thoughts and finally said, Well? What is your problem?

Goo sighed and glanced around, nervous and hating herself. Theseus didn’t seem to be listening but she could never be sure. He seemed to be anywhere and everywhere at once. I’m not happy, she said.

Interesting, he said. I don’t hear that one often.

Goo whispered, now. Sometimes I want to leave the game.

But why? he said.

I used to have a life, a dayworld life.

The Redeemer raised his furry eyebrows. Do you drink the Pale?

Rarely, she said.

He grunted. Good for you.

I love it here, she said. But I hate it, too.

The Redeemer was gazing at her with pity in his eyes and she wondered if he was thinking of her tongue. His eyes were gentle, perhaps. But the whites of them were laced with blood. Careful, she needed to be careful and now the Redeemer sighed. Who am I speaking to? he said.

Goo, she said. But she knew she sounded doubtful and he just stared at her.

This is getting silly, he said.

What do you mean?

Eve, he said. Don’t you know me?

It was hard to swallow, to breathe. She wanted to get away from this man.

It’s okay, he said. You can be two people at once.

No, she said. I don’t want that.

Disappear, he said softly. Walk outside and disappear from the game.

Her left eyelid began to twitch, to blink uncontrollably. And she felt sick, she felt dizzy because that only happened when Eve was nervous, when she was paranoid and sleepless.

This world isn’t real, he said.

My boyfriend would disagree, she said.

Theseus was glaring at them from maybe fifteen feet away and she wondered when he had slithered so close, and how much he had heard. She knew that he disapproved of the Redeemers and tolerated them only because they were necessary.

Her belly was exposed, her weak half.

She couldn’t stand to look at him now. She backed away from the bar and dragged herself off to the dressing room, where Adore reclined on a mound of dirty pillows, rigid and bony. She often reminded Goo of a dead praying mantis. Adore had a headache, it seemed. She wore a woven silk ice pouch over her eyes and the room smelled of roses. The only light came from a green lamp that glowed like a fat firefly behind lace. Goo stood in the doorway, feeling like a wayward daughter. Her hair was a wreck and her skin itched as if she were covered in dry white soap. She was short of breath and confused. The Redeemer had not tried to kiss her, to take her tongue. And his advice had been very unorthodox.

No one ever suggested that you leave the game, no one.

Adore made a clucking sound. Gather yourself, girl.

I’m sorry, Lady.

Adore removed her ice pouch and regarded Goo with bloody eyes.

Don’t be sorry, girl. You are an Exquisitor.

You flatter me, Lady.

I do not.

Goo cast her eyes away, embarrassed. She was only an apprentice. Adore laughed at her, a delicate and fluttering sound. She held out her hands and Goo moved to help her up.

Shall we take the stage? said Adore.

I found myself sitting on the floor of Eve’s empty apartment, eating eggdrop soup in bright, unflinching silence. Eve apparently owned no television, no stereo. The only sound was my own manic slurping. At some point I must have thrown open the windows, praying for a little breeze or the distraction of traffic noise, but I couldn’t really remember doing so. It was odd, but Eve didn’t seem to have a telephone, either. Though I could have sworn she did have one. I had used it to order the food, hadn’t I? And that was an hour ago, maybe two. But now I couldn’t find a phone anywhere. It was a little maddening. I looked around and around, my head swiveling like a puppet’s. I rubbed my eyes, disgusted. She didn’t have a coffeemaker, a toaster. There were no electrical appliances at all. Maybe the food was delivered by fairies. Or else the phone was stolen by them.

I was alone in the apartment. Chrome and Mingus the Breather had apparently taken their leave. Faded from the scene without word or gesture. I could barely remember their faces, now. I wasn’t so confident that they were real. They were too similar to the freaks that regularly populated my dreams. But if I closed my eyes, I could see Chrome in distorted flashes as he speared a dumpling with one yellow fingernail and fed it rather graphically to Mingus. There was fried rice scattered on the wood floor, as if I had been feeding imaginary squirrels. There were two untouched bowls of soup on the floor, and two spoons. I was Goldilocks, then. The soup is too hot, too cold. I wanted to write it all off as unexpected weirdness, nothing more. But I was dizzy, numb. As if I had suffered a mild electric shock. Or involuntary contact with two nonhumans. I forced myself to clean up the rice, to wash the bowls. I wiped my hands on my pants and stood staring at a long black wrinkle in my shirt, where Mingus the Breather had been kind enough to sew up a nasty hole in the fabric.

Well, then. They were real enough.

Here we go. I found this little blue notebook in the kitchen and not sure why, but I stole it. Eve had only written a few words on the first page, notes for a class and I couldn’t be sure but it looked like Logic 101. And the rest of the book was blank.

I was going to rip that page out and start fresh but decided not to. The disconnected pieces of logic appealed to me, the odd little phrases. They comfort, somehow. And she has such fine crooked handwriting, like bugs crawling out of my head. Anyway. Not sure what I was thinking. It had been months since I wrote anything at all by hand. Not even a postcard to my poor mother. The rare signature maybe, on a bad credit card slip. Oh, yeah. I signed a lot of room service tabs when I was with Jude. She loved fucking room service. But the last thing I would have written by hand was probably an incident report for the department that was dull as a cloudless sky, I’m sure. That shit was deadly.

If I wanted to tell the truth, I would say that I stole Eve’s notebook because I wanted to keep a record. And what use this might be is hard to say. I know this much. I can’t really trust my memory anymore. Or my perception of what’s real. And it’s funny to think that I have never done this before. This will be my first diary. If you could even call it that.

Dear Jude. If I knew where you were I might send these notes to you.

But I should tell you that something bothers me and maybe it’s nothing, nothing to worry about. I have my share of paranoid tendencies. As you know. Okay. I have been back in Denver for less than a day now and I’m looking over my shoulder like there’s a contract out on my narrow ass. I can almost feel the crosshairs on my neck. It’s not you, is it? I guess it wouldn’t shock me. If you were out there. Following me, watching me from rooftops with the eye of a sniper.

Unless I inform you otherwise, I don’t know what day it is. Which is why these notes are not dated. I don’t even know the correct time. It seems I sold my watch a few days back. Anyway. It’s only been a few hours.

I had to get out of Eve’s place. The boyfriend was freaking me out. Did I mention she has a boyfriend, a sick fucker with bad clothes. His name is Chrome and he suggested I change my name to Fred. I’m not kidding. You would want to kill him on sight. He said something funny, though. He asked me if I wanted to go see Elvis and it sounded a lot like a threat. How about that. I’m going to Graceland.

You remember where you were when the news came on the radio that he was dead?

Late summer and stupidly hot and I was at Chloe’s house. My first real girlfriend and she was trashy and not very smart and conditioned by her loutish stepfather to flinch when you looked hard at her or moved your arm too suddenly and was therefore happy to suck me off right on the couch whenever I dropped by with cigarettes or ice cream. Which I felt bad about but I was only thirteen and couldn’t very well say no when she unzipped my pants and bent over me with the cool silence of a Catholic girl doing a few Hail Marys. We were watching the Stooges, I think. And the couch was covered in dirty laundry and I could smell the stepfather’s socks and Chloe’s head was busily twisting in my lap when they interrupted the broadcast to say that the King was dead. Chloe lifted her face then, her mouth puffy and red. She stared at the television, stricken and pale and she said, oh my mother loves him or she used to, before he got so fat and gross, you know. Then she resumed, she sucked me off like she was born to the task and actually swallowed my gunk. Which inspired me to tell her I loved her. I was thirteen.

Chrome:

He was hungry. Oh, he was violent. He slashed at the air with his long fingers and leaned to breathe obscenities into Mingus’s left ear.

I want to hunt, he said.

Mingus glanced at the sky. It’s raining.

Chrome muttered, not here.

They sat on a circle of grass overlooking the freeway. Chrome was on edge, he was bored. He began to play with Eve’s telephone, picking up the receiver and saying: Yes, who’s there? He had cut the cord and removed the phone from her apartment on a whim, thinking to confuse and alienate the sickly Phineas, whom he had found distasteful and oddly alluring.

He looked over at Mingus, who still stared like a simpleton down at the freeway. He was fascinated by cars, the poor thing. His favorite was the Saturn. He claimed it was the most graceful and godlike of machines. Chrome had to smile at this notion. He told Mingus that the Saturn was manufactured in Tennessee by unevolved humans.

Mingus was ignoring him, though. Which was not wise. Chrome stared at his own fingers. They were twitching and he realized he could easily kill his little friend. It could happen as suddenly as a violent sneeze, a brief involuntary convulsion. It was disturbing, really.

There’s a green one, said Mingus. They are the prettiest, I think.

J’ai faim, Chrome said.

English, said Mingus. Speak English.

I’m hungry, he said.

It isn’t safe to hunt by day.

Please, said Chrome. The Freds come and go.

Everyone comes and goes.

But the Freds stay in character.

As do we, said Mingus.

Ah, yes. But I am a bit more self-aware, said Chrome.

Chrome removed a garrote from his boot and twirled it on one finger. The black cord was soft and silky to the touch but strong as piano wire. There was a piece of wood the approximate size of his pinkie at either end, wrapped in leather. He could kill a bear with the thing, if he could only creep up on one.

You twit, he said. That was a Mustang.

My eyes are failing in this light.

How is your nose?

Fine, said Mingus. I can smell you.

Do you not smell meat?

Mingus frowned. A car had drifted to a stop nearby, an ordinary Toyota. It was perhaps a hundred feet away, parked under a little tree. The windows were down and two men sat in the front seat. The angles of their jaws suggested an uneasy discussion of money. Mingus would surely smell sex on them, like salt and fresh earth. Even Chrome could smell it. The sex was coming from them in waves.

We will not hunt a Citizen, said Mingus.

Of course not. You will sniff out an unfortunate Fred who has lost his way.

I walked out of Eve’s place and felt better straightaway. The oxygen had been too thin up there, or too pure. And I had been talking to myself in no time, poking at my eyes with restless fingers. I did find my knife, thank God. It was hidden under a sofa cushion. I had tried and failed to write Eve a note. Thank you for the use of the sofa, the money for food. Thanks for washing my clothes. And I love your new friends…and fuck it. I had crumpled these aborted little notes and tossed them at the window. I would see her later, maybe. It looked like she was running around with a lot of freaks but why the hell should I care. She was hardly a proper little girl before, was she. And she was not a child to be looked after.