He flipped on the hanging lamp over the mirror, his body so pumped that there was no longer any distinction between flexing and not flexing. Jem was flexed. Every part of him blood-tanned and tumescent.
Every part.
The shorts came off. Facing himself in the mirror under the swinging lamp, he gripped his ass with his other hand, and his third hand-- had to be-- pulled back on the bank manager's hair, making her want it, making her work for it. The purple dinosaur pounding at the door threw him off, the bank manager momentarily becoming Krista, but he concentrated hard, and by the time he corrected himself he was too close for Kleenex.
His acid spew scorched the vanity in the shape of a question mark, Jem finishing and stepping back, decreeing, "That shit is fucked-up."
In the hot shower, his pig's dick hung swollen and pink between his legs. He gave the nozzle his back, shutting his eyes-- the water jet turning to fire on his shoulders, the nozzle like a welder's torch spewing flame. Sparks danced off his body like spray, the blue flame fashioning something of him, forging a new being, a man of iron transformed in a baptism of fire.
He knew now what he had to do. What the Man of Iron-- formerly the Man of Glue-- must do.
He dressed in black and returned to the basement, to his grandfather's old steamer trunk under the stairs. He worked the combination on the lock, and the hinges-- arthritic from the dankness-- groaned as the trunk opened its mouth. He lifted his gramps's uniform off the weapons and trophies the old man had brought back from the Pacific-- his rifle, the swords, the half-dozen grenades cling-wrapped in an oversized egg carton-- along with some other small arms he had tucked away, and some cash, that was the seed out of which the great rebellion would soon grow. From the bottom of this trunk, he pulled out the Foodmaster bag, then closed and relocked his treasure chest.
This was what brothers did. They watched each other's back.
In darkness he set out on his mission, soldiering through the night Town with the bag tucked under his arm. Crows and keening pterodactyls swooped down from the Heights, screaming over Bunker Hill Street. Voices spoke at him from doorways, alleys, corners. An impossibly ancient woman, older than the sidewalk, whispered to him,
Take care of her for us,
to which Jem replied telepathically,
Ma'am, I will
.
Through Monument Square under the granite spike. Night creatures sailed around it on robe wings-- the spirits of altar boys loosed from church attics-- drawn to the heaven finger that was a radio tower broadcasting WTOWN, all day and all night, the reception strong and clear inside Jem's head.
Doug was getting ready to fly. Jem picked up his pace, the ocean roaring in his ears.
Packard Street was the heart of the disease. The G was a cancer in the Town, Jem the fucking deliriant chemo. Jem, the sin eater, the avenging archangel.
In the alley behind Packard he saw her glazed bathroom window, pushed open a few inches for him, just enough. Jem pulled on gloves, and with a glance up and down the alley, tucked the bag into his belt.
He asked for invisibility. It was granted.
Up onto her purple car without a sound, from its roof to the top of the dividing brick wall. He found a hand grip on the brick face of the sleeping building, the window within his reach now. It was old, like those in his mother's house, hanging on clothesline pulleys, needing only a shove to rise.
He asked for, and received, stealth, night vision, and cloaking silence. For a moment he hung two-handedly from the wooden sill-- then he raised himself over it, crawling inside headfirst, being born into the room, coming to rest on the cold tile floor.
The bathroom-- the crotch in the body of the home. The kitchen was the heart; the bedroom the brain; the dining room the stomach; the living room the lungs. The front door its face; the garage its ass.
The crotch was dark and cool. A steady dripping inside the porcelain bowl at his shoulder. The flower smells of night creams.
His vision was good, and he untucked the paper bag from his waist, controlling the wrinkling noise. He pulled out the mask by its oval eye sockets, standing, fitting the black strap over the back of his head.
So long as you ditched the masks, she's got nothing.
Course I ditched the masks.
Well, you seemed pretty fond of your artwork, I want to be sure.
Fuck you, Duggy. So fucking clever.
In the sink mirror, the white Cheevers mask floated against the blackness of its eyes and graffiti scars.
He emerged from the crotch into the lungs. Green digits of a stereo clock pulsing against the wall. A nightlight showing him the way.
The door to the sleeping brain was closed. He gripped the knob with his gloved hand and entered.
Streetlights gave him the room. Red clock digits quivering near the bed where she awaited him.
His knee touched the side of the mattress as he stood over her, listening to her breathe.
She sensed his presence. Her legs moved beneath the sheets. Her head turned under spilled hair, first finding the opened door. She brushed the hair back off her eyes. Then she saw.
The face of the deliriant. She opened her mouth to scream.
36
Wire
D
OUG SHOWED UP ON her doorstep with a plastic Foodmaster bag of groceries, feeling pretty good. There was a peculiar morning-after pleasure in having refused immediate gratification, in resisting his craving with an eye toward a greater design. This was the bedrock of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it occurred to him that this was also how religions were born.
He found her door open a crack and felt a moment of concern, quickly mastered by rationalization. Lots of people in Town left their doors half-shut while running out for a quick errand. There would be a note on the table telling him that she had gone for more eggs, and to make himself at home.
"Hey?" he said with a knock on the open door, moving inside. "It's me."
Nothing. He moved down the hallway, telling himself it wasn't danger he was sensing.
"Claire?"
She was standing in the living room, on the other side of the sofa between the coffee table and the stereo, wearing faded blue jeans and an untucked yellow T-shirt, a cordless telephone in her hand at her side.
"Hey," Doug said, stopping, feeling something in the air. "You know your door was open?"
The way she was staring told him that she knew.
"Why?" she said.
Doug went numb. He set the grocery bag on the floor. "Why what?"
"Is this a thing you do?"
Something in him believed he could bluff his way out of this, even as it was all slipping away. "You talking about breakfast, or...?"
"Tearing women down and building them back up again?"
The side of the sofa was as near to her as he dared move. His talk was pointless, but he wanted to keep on believing. "I brought bacon, I..."
"Or was I some sort of bet? A contest maybe?"
Something had happened since last night. Somehow she knew things now, and his instinct for self-preservation kicked in. The way she was standing at the back of the room with the phone. "Who else is here?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "No one," she snapped. "Not anymore."
Frawley.
The kitchen was empty. Doug stepped to her bathroom, sweeping aside the shower curtain on the wide open window. He crossed to her bedroom, also empty.
Doug's defeat found an outlet in fury. "What did you tell him?"
She hadn't moved, watching him. "I didn't tell
him
anything."
A trap. The plan was to draw him into apologizing his way through a confession, him explaining himself right back into prison. The microphones could be anywhere.
He reached for her stereo, the CD player, turning it up loud. Smashing Pumpkins music filled her condo, all gunning guitar and bald-boy thrashing.
Her eyes went dark as he advanced. "Stay away from me," she said, backing up a step, raising the phone antenna-first. "I'll call the police."
Doug lunged for her and grabbed the phone, ripping it out of her hand, whipping it across the room at the sofa.
She froze, stunned.
With the music blasting, he pushed her up against the wall and shut his hand over her mouth, his callused palm catching her scream. He felt down both sides of her chest, her belly and her waist, groping her through her shirt.
Her voice was smothered, eyes wide. She tried to fend him off but he pinned her near arm to the wall with his elbow, working fast.
He reached beneath her shirt, sliding his fingers around the waist of her jeans. Then up her abdomen to the satin band linking the cups of her bra. Her free hand gripped his wrist, trying to stop him from going there. He pushed his fingers underneath the center strap, exploring her cleavage, finding no wires.
His hand came out of her shirt with Claire still gripping his wrist. He was too strong for her, reaching around for the small of her back, feeling nothing through her jeans there, then sliding his hand along the insides of both thighs, feeling up her inseam to her crotch.
Nothing. No battery pack, no wire.
She stared into his face, her hand still fighting his wrist. Then he eased off, realizing what he had just done. "I had to see if you were wired," he told her. "I had to-- "
She jerked her knee up, hitting him in the thigh, just missing his balls. She went at him, slapping and whacking, and he let her. Her barefoot kicking didn't have much behind it, but the cracks across his face hurt. He defended himself without fighting back, eventually retreating a few steps.
She screamed, "You go to fucking
hell
!"
"It's not what you think." What could he say to her? "Whatever he told you-- "
"I fucking
hate
you!"
"No." He shook that off, he refused it.
She looked for something to throw at him, found the
AM Gold
disc he had loaned her, cracked it off his elbow. Then she struck out at her blaring stereo, shoving it twice before it crashed to the floor-- and even then, the music still played. Not until she ripped the plug out of the wall did the tune die.
Doug talked fast. "The robbery-- whatever you know is true. But since then-- I don't know what happened. All I can think about is you."
"You Townie gym-head... asshole... convict... fucking street
trash
..."
He stood up to all of this.
"What?" she said, wild-eyed, fixing her bra through her shirt. "Did you think you were going to come over here this morning and make me breakfast and
fuck me
? Tell all your
friends
?"
He shook his head, mouth closed tight.
"Making me feel sorry for you," she said.
He exploded. "
Sorry
for me?"
His rage shocked her. A long moment of brittle defiance, then she cried like she was vomiting tears into her hands. "Why would you do this to me?" she wailed. "Why would you do this to anybody?"
What could he tell her?
I am in love with you? I want to go away with you?
"You knew last night," he said. "At the ballpark--
you knew
. Yet it was all right. You wanted me back here." He opened his hands down at his sides. "Why not now?"
She caught her breath, sniffling, bringing her hands away from her raw face. Defiant again. "I guess your friend refreshed my memory."
Doug's blood rose again. "Is that what Agent fucking Frawley calls me? His
friend
?"
She stood still, breathing. "What?"
Doug could not disguise the look of murder on his face. "What else did he say?"
"Frawley? It wasn't Frawley." She smiled crazy. "It was your friend in the hockey mask."
Hockey mask. Doug stared at her, confused.
"What?"
Claire crossed the room to retrieve her phone from the sofa.
Doug shook his head but couldn't feel anything. He looked to her bathroom, the window she kept open. He looked at her open bedroom door. "He what?"
Hockey mask. Open window.
"I want you to go," she said.
Jem. Doug looked her up and down. "Did he touch you?"
She held the phone poised to dial. "He warned me not to go to the police, but so help me God, if you don't
get the hell out...
"
Doug shook his head, staving off hysteria. Jem's lips on her lemonade straw.
"Did he touch you?"
She had tears again, and Doug stared, looming before her, fists at his side. "Out," she told him. "Of my house. Of my life."
