Punktown: Shades of Grey (27 page)

Back at my office, I feed the fish in the big greenish dome that dominates the center of the room. The ornament on top, the winged head of a cherub, unscrews, you see, and I sneak something out from my pocket and drop it into the water.

The fish, like so many things in Paxton, are not native. They look like spearheads, glinting and sharp. Sometimes, when I stay late at the office, I shut off the lights and watch their pale luminous eyes moving in the murk; it’s like a tiny round universe of drunken stars.

The treat sinks down through the green water, like a jellyfish in rigor mortis and the fish devour it, even the bones.

I take several calls; bland voices, like my own, fill my head. At least I don’t have to smile on the phone, though I’ve learned how to sound like I am smiling. Near five, I loosen my tie and my secretary runs over some notes with me. Her perfume reminds me of spices I ate on a business trip last year.

It’s dusk when I leave the office building, a great copper thing with verdigris trim and pillars holding rotating globes of bluish gas on a platform on the roof. Birds don’t know what to make of the things. It’s a five-minute walk to the rail. A stationary chrome robot scans my pass and I creak through the turnstile. Of course it’s crowded on the tram and my cabin smells like bubble gum.

I am lucky enough to get a seat. My neighbor is a skinny bearded man in a grey suit like mine. He is reading a magazine that boasts slathered, disproportionate body builders on the cover. He tucks his face close to the pages—looks like he wants to lick the ink off.

I wonder what the maid will have waiting for supper. I wonder what Medea is doing. Maybe she is in the whirl-tub with a glass of wine. Maybe a Sumo wrestler is in the big round tub with her. Maybe the wrestler has a penis like a horse, an obscene water plant jutting out of the gurgles and steam.

I see Medea sitting naked in the water—it comes up to her belly and winks in and out of her navel. Her mild, proper hair is damp and disarrayed. She is leaning back against the padded edge of the tub and one of the submerged jets is pulsing against her ass. She eyes the wobbling pink horse member.

The wrestler is chewing on a severed hand. His corpulent bulk rests—folds of slippery flesh piled there in the tub. The incongruous penis
rises
higher, a periscope. Sloshing, Medea edges toward the man. She wraps her hands around the thick thing and tugs up and down.

The man tells her to do something, but his voice does not sound Asian, it sounds more like mine. Medea complies, bending her face over the head of the phallus, which is the pink of the umbrellas at the café. Medea rubs the swollen head against her lips and maps it with her tongue. The ogre grabs her wet hair and pushes her head up and down and her mouth makes slurping noises. She moans when he sputters in her mouth.

My phone rings.

“Denton.”

It’s a wrong number.

The man beside me takes a bite out of his magazine. He chews loudly, crunching on the glossy paper.

««—»»

After dinner, Medea reads a story to the girls. She looks like my mother in that powder blue nightgown. It makes me think of when I was a small boy home sick from school, lying in my room listening to the gurgling of the fish tank, cuddling the balled up softness of my mother’s nightgown. It always smelled like her hair. For some reason I also think of how cool it felt when she ran her prosthetic hand through my hair.

I sit in my study and have a gin and tonic as I work on the proposal for Sov-Labs. Medea is in the bathroom and I imagine that the maid is in there with her, behind her as she bends over the sink. The maid is a Nicaraguan brown, naked, with a fierce strap-on dildo jutting out. The woman is pounding the thing into my wife and their four breasts are swaying forward and back. The maid’s nipples are like coins of coffee and Medea’s blush like those umbrellas.

Medea has a face cloth stuffed in her mouth to muffle her moans and the maid is sucking on one of her ears, her breasts now squashed against Medea’s shoulder blades. The dildo is shiny black and it slurps in and out until Medea convulses, her eyes rolling back, the breath from her nostrils white on the mirror.

Carrying my drink upstairs, I listen outside the bathroom. The door almost hits me as Medea comes out, soft in her blue gown. She smiles and passes me, going to the bed. I go into the bathroom and change into my pajamas, then brush my teeth.

I climb into bed and glance at her crafts magazine. Of course there’s a picture of her in it—she is oiled and wild-looking, tied up with yarn on a table, surrounded by rustic rag dolls while a swarthy man in a pink turban stands masturbating on her breasts.

“That was a fine dinner,” I say, looking away as my pajama bottoms strain.

“Oh, thank you, dear. God, I hope Maria comes back tomorrow. I really hate to cook.”

The maid has been out sick for several days.

“Well, you did a fine job.”

“You’re sweet to say, Dean.”

She flips the page.

“Good night, Medea,” I say and I give her a peck.

««—»»

I can’t sleep. Medea is gone. I hear her down in the alley, her cries echoing up the side of the building as the Choom gang boys have at her. One is behind her, thrusting, one is kneeling in her face and she is slobbering, another is holding her ears like handles, guiding her head. Others have ejaculated on her back and in her hair, have rubbed mushrooms caps against her cheeks, have spit on her and pinched her and hit her. I know she’s down there in the dark gulping and sweating, their tattoos grinning at her, her breasts jiggling, her eyes rolling back into her head.

“Fuck her,” I whisper into the dark.

I must go to the office. I am aching against my pajamas, the blanket obscenely tented. I rise quietly, so as not to wake her, dress in the bathroom. Downstairs, out of earshot…I call a cab.

««—»»

The glow from the fish globe under-lights the placid features of the cherub decoration that sits on its top.
I am erect, as if dowsing for the green water. The fish are like knives, their eyes glowing, moving. I unscrew the cherub head and it thumps on the carpet.

I know Medea is home on our bed and a husky Italian man is yanking at her nipples and grunting, driving deeply where my daughters came out. She is like a mammal caught in a trap, her face fierce with abandon, her legs wide open. Another man takes his turn; he is exotic, dark and his tongue is a cow’s, big and umbrella-pink, and it drools slowly, up and down across her vulva. The blue nightgown is bunched up above her breasts and a thin muscular man with long dark hair is piercing her nipples while the next man pumps away at her. Now there is blood in a thin ribbon down her breast, the blood pink in her sweat and she is yelling at them, telling them what she wants.

My pants land on the floor by my shirt. My boxers follow. I am so hard! I put my palms against the big globe—it is cool against my belly.

“Fuck me!” she tells them.

I strain with my legs, push so that my weight is on top of the globe. There is an opening and water—slashes of silver waiting.

“Fuck me!”

I nudge
blindly,
feel my erection slide into the hole. The water licks at me and the fish come.

“Fuck me!”

The fish come with their eyes glowing like ghostly sperm as I stab into the globe. They converge—it is a treat for them and they devour it.

— | — | —

VETERANS

Concept by Jeffrey Thomas

VFW Post 81…

The room seemed to be permanently sealed in a sickish green haze;
cigarette smoke
and faded neons merged to form a surreal mist. All the patrons in the barroom looked as though they belonged in the murk. They were, after all, fading memories reliving faded memories.

The bar itself was long and rectangular. Two old Chooms worked in the center, busily pouring shots and sliding taps. A traditional jukebox thumped dully. War relics such as swords and flags rested upon dusty walls.

The old soldiers strained cloudy minds to recall the glory and horror of wars long ago. Oh, how soon heroes fade. At least they’d survived, at least they had their pensions,
at
least they had the Post. No longer did they stand at attention, no longer proud and brave. Gravity tugged heavily at soggy age-drenched faces. Trigger fingers shook like bony vibrators. Once-keen marksman eyes hid behind fleshy lids, staring into piss-yellow brews. Excluding only four, every veteran in the room was over 60.

They took up one of the short ends of the long bar. At one corner sat Kloud, in his mid-twenties, pale, with a long bony face, dark longish ear-obscuring hair,
mustache
. Long wide sideburns hid the shrapnel craters across his jaw. He wore a dark brown jacket of leather, black pants, red T-shirt.

Casper sat next to him, nursing a vodka kingpin. A few years older than Kloud, his light brown hair was crawling away from his large forehead to dangle down the back of his neck in disarray. His face was tight, menacing control, eyes lost behind cola-colored wire rims. His beard was nonchalant. His clothes were old: once-black T-shirt, light tan jacket, jeans and boots.

At the far end sat Dennison, a tall, thin man with long straight hair of dirty blond. He swept it across his forehead and stared down the bar through wire rim prescriptions. He looked intelligently tough. A curious necklace of short tooth-like objects hung around his neck, across his black T-shirt. The patch on his dark brown jacket showed a boar’s face; it read: Tusk Company.

Sitting between Dennison and Casper, Murphy was physically the largest and most powerful of the lot. He radiated the contented power of a thick-maned lion. His face was strong, wide, with well-defined cheekbones, powerful jaw. His lips were a defiant bow, nose firm, eyes threateningly impassive, dark and smallish with low brows. He wore his customary heavy sheepskin coat with its deep tan outer layer and its soft cream lining. His tunic was
loose, white, jeans
faded, boots scratched. The tip of a sheathed bayonet hung down past the edge of his sheepskin.

Murphy watched a mist-blurred sign as it blinked:
Knickerson on TAP
. His eyes were clever—drunken.

“Another beer, Captain?” dark-haired Kloud asked in his boyish voice.

Murphy turned slowly and gave an almost telepathic nod. He pushed his long dark mane back over his ear, pushed it back leaving his forehead bare.

Kloud tapped a coin on the counter, an ancient warrior with a great toothless mouth responded.

“Another Clemens Light for the Captain.”

The bartender eyed him with shrouded contempt and fidgeted beneath the bar. He placed a brown plastic bottle in front of Murphy.

They were used to the stares. The old men were from a different world. They did not know what to make of these
long-haired
young creatures. The patch with a boar’s face belonged to a war that was no more than a myth. How could there be veterans of a war that did not exist? In their old wrinkled minds, the only thing they shared with those four dangerous-looking men was a bar counter.

Eventually the husks began drifting off into the night; some limped, some stumbled, some did both. It grew darker at “the Post”; the walls crept closer.