Sinners Circle (12 page)

This time, on the way down to the
parking lot, we take the elevator and leave through the main doors. This time,
it doesn’t feel like a nightmare, because as we’re riding the elevator she
pushes the button and slips her fingers through mine. Our hands, they fit
together perfectly. Palms pressed against each other, we walk out the front
doors of the hospital.

Steering through traffic she
tells me all about her pet cat. At a traffic light she tells me how much she
doesn’t like dogs. At a four way stop she says, “My favorite smell ever is, you
know when you huff on a sleepy kitten stretching and just waking up? Or a
hamster that’s sound asleep? That’s my favorite ever.”

Her whole apartment smells like
fresh cucumbers and she even fluffs the pillow on the bed she makes for me on
the couch. When I’m lying there staring at her spotless ceiling listening to
her hum as she cuts up a lemon to put in some ice water for me, she tells me
that the bathroom is down the hall if I need it, right beside her bedroom. When
she disappears for a few minutes and then comes back in her pajamas, she wishes
me good night and closes her door. I wait a few minutes.

I pull down the covers she tucked
around me and I sneak quietly to her bedroom. I close my eyes and think of her
head on my chest and her hand on my shoulder. I think of how beautiful her lips
looked when she said “I don’t eat babies.” I think about how wet I got when she
touched my shoulder. I think about her hands and fingers looped through mine in
the elevator. When I open my eyes again, my hand is on the center of her wood
door. I can’t help but sighing, I take my hand away, let it
sway
at my side, then walk back to the couch and crawl back under the blankets. As I
sleep I dream about my mother humming to me and playing with my hair while she
drank gin and we watched TV. I dream about Gina in the bathtub. I dream about
lemons and cucumbers, cats and traffic lights. I dream of Sophie and angel
wings. I dream of her until I am awake and she is holding out a mug of
Chamomile tea for me to take. She smiles and asks me, “How was your sleep?”

“Nietzsche
tastes better than
Twain
, but Twain tastes better than
Jung.”

“Who?”

“Jung.” Scott holds up a chewed
cover of
The Red Book
, the only thing
that’s left of the entire thing. “Carl Jung.”

“Oh.”

I pat my pockets for cigarettes
then tap Carl’s arm. “You got any smokes?”

Scott points to the corner in the
ceiling, at a paper-
mâché
attempt of the Millennium
Falcon. “See that? That’s the whole series of
The Hardy Boys
.”

Carl hands me a cigarette, offers
one to Scott but he shakes his head. “Shit is unhealthy man. Shit will kill
you.”

I’m suddenly aware of what that
horrible smell was when I entered Scott’s house. Now I know it’s his bowel-made
papier-mâché Star Wars art dangling in the corner. I light my cigarette and
blow the smoke out my nose. Scott, he’s our drug dealer. Carl and I, we come
over, talk with Scott for about an hour, pretend to be friends, and then we
leave without any genuine concern for his mortality.

The weird thing is though, Carl
and I, we’ve been coming to Scott for just over a year now and I’ve never seen
him eat any food. Nor have I seen any trace evidence of him actually possessing
food. His refrigerator, it’s full of various drugs, neatly categorized next to
dozens of bottles of booze and jam jars of urine. He keeps his piss in the
fridge so he can drink it a few days after a real peyote bender, “Just like the
Indians did,” he tells us. Apparently, this will keep him high.

What I find truly ridiculous is
that Scott will eat an entire set of encyclopedias, but if you mention the
possibility of him consuming any meat or animal product he’ll look at you like
you’re a walking talking pile of garbage and say something like, “As a human
being, I’m just not comfortable with eating flesh.” The closest thing to food
I’ve ever seen him eat was a recipe book some customer of his dropped off along
with dozens of others containing recipes for dishes served in other countries
around the world—no kidding.

This being said, Scott is also
the only dealer in the city who sells decent heroin at a low cost, and if I
don’t have to see him all the time and I’m getting good drugs for cheap, I
really don’t mind wasting an hour with him every now and then.
Even if it
is
spent with
him showing me his paper-
mâché
-
poo
-fan-art.

We stick around while Scott talks
about wanting to make a sculpture of Jesus by eating dozens of copies of
Gideon’s Bible and using his self made
mâché
. “If I
died, I would die a martyr. See, it’d be a martyr’s death because I would be
trying to bring a statue of Christ into this world using
my own
body. I’d get into heaven for sure.” We stick around while
he cuts up our drugs, weighs them, wraps them all the while talking about how
in love he is with his sister. “But she’s got that
husband
man
... that
fucking husband
. I tell you though, if he wasn’t in the picture, we
would be one. We
are
one, do you hear
me Amanda? Do you hear me?”

We stay while he eats our money.
But we leave when he walks over to the fridge, gets out a jar of piss and
starts drinking it on the couch.

In the car Carl asks me if I have
any money.

“Yeah a couple bucks.”

“You
wanna
go get a beer?”

We go to Pinks, sit down at a
booth. Ronnie is there with some girl in a latex mini skirt and fishnets. She’s
smoking a cigarette and saying, “... he sits there in his car, gives me cash then
waits for me to come back into the alley with guys. When I’m done fucking them
I go back to his car and squeeze the
jizz
out onto
his face. He’ll sit there for about two hours, hands on the steering wheel, not
wiping
the cum
off his face. It’s fucking gross, but
it pays for my groceries.”

I wave two fingers at a passing
waitress,
she looks confused then nods and heads to the bar.
The mini skirt girl says, “
not
that I can bare looking
at him anyway, but after the fifth or sixth rubber I just can’t do it anymore.”
She taps the ash of her smoke into an empty wine glass. “Sickest part is
,
he gets
off
on
that shit. He gets
off
that I’m so
disgusted I can’t even
look
at him.”

Ronnie brushes some hair off his
face, his voice the volume of a mouse. “Wow, right.”

Mini skirt looks at us.

Carl smiles, waves like a coward.
“Oh hi.”

She doesn’t look impressed.
“Oh hi,
Carl
.
You going to buy me a drink?
Whose
your lady friend?”

He looks at me, she looks at me,
I look at the waitress over at the bar fumbling with a bottle opener. Mini
skirt kicks my shin under the table. “Hey. I’m talking to you. What the fuck is
your name?”

I scratch my neck. “If I gave you
twelve dollars, would you let me punch you in the face?”

She drops her cigarette into her
wine glass. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“What if I gave you twelve fifty?
Could I
shave
your pussy, too?”

She shouts: “What are you?
Some kind of sick dyke?”

The entire crowd here at Pinks,
they stop what they are doing and look at her, and the eruption of insults thrown—I
wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It doesn’t even take until the count of three
for a glass of beer to splash her makeup half off. A bottle bursts at her feet
and an entire bowl of maraschino cherries lands in her hair. The way she’s
breathing while a small army of bull dykes push her out the doors and up the
stairs, I can tell she’s having a panic attack.

After that, I get free drinks and
phone numbers,
coming out to
parents
stories, pats on the back and numberless shared
cigarettes from every woman in the bar. And it’s ladies night.

Ronnie doesn’t say
anything,
he just keeps sniffing tiny bags of drugs and
dropping them on the floor. When it’s closing time, the waitress, she even
gives me and Carl money to get a cab home. She says, “Sorry about that, what a
bitch. How could she say those things to another human being? It’s completely
degrading...”

Carl collapses on the couch, I’m
asleep before I hit the pillow and I dream of nothing.

“He
wrote me a love poem and then put it on my pillow. So when I woke up this
morning, even though he wasn’t there, I could feel his love for me.” Alison
hugs a piece of paper to her chest. “I’m keeping this forever.”

I crack my neck, tap my
cigarette. “Whatever.”

She closes her eyes and sighs. “How could you
say something like that about something as beautiful as this?” She presses the
paper deep between her tits.

I shake my head. “Love poems are
the receipt, the proof of purchase, of all the crap you just bought into.”

“What kind of sick person looks
at love that way?”

I poke her paper chest. “Same
question.”

She frowns, turns around and goes
back into the coffee shop. Trisha looks at me, but the second our eyes connect
she drops her head and pretends to be cleaning a table.

I walk back to work.
Harry’s
sucking on something, a big wad of rubbery gum.
“You got the inventory sheets done?”

I nod. “Yeah, I got ‘
em
done.”

He sucks on that huge ball in his
mouth. “Kay,
wanna
put them in my office when you got
a minute?”

“Sure.” I grab the clipboard,
flip through the sheets to make sure they are all there and hand it to him.

He keeps sucking, biting down and
popping his jaw wide open between chews.
“No, in my office.”

I walk to his closet office but
the door is locked, he stares at me for a few seconds, digs in his pockets and
clears his throat while he sorts through his massive key ring. He tries a few
but none work, eventually when he does and the door is open I toss the
clipboard onto his desk. A stress ball rolls off a pile of papers falls down
and knocks over the garbage can, litter spilling all over the floor. Strangely though, the only trash in there is
little balls of electrical tape and crunched up strips of paper. Harry points
to the corner at the end of the hall outside his office. There’s a broom and
dustpan leaning against the door frame of the bathroom. I sweep up his tape and
paper trash, dump it all back into the bin and check my watch. My shift is over
in ten minutes.

Harry says, “Next week I’m not
gonna
be here for two days. So I’ll need you to do tills
and closing on both nights.”

“Sure.”

He nods, turning that ball of
rubber gum over in his mouth. “Ok good.”

I stop for a pack of smokes and a
case of beer at a convenience store.

When I get home Sophie is sitting
on my front steps reading a book. When I get out of the car and wave to her she
doesn’t stand up. She just sits there smiling and
squinting
the sun out of her eyes. “Oh good, you got your car back.”

“Yeah Carl brought it back the
other day after work.”

She looks back at her book, shrugs,
then back at me. “Well that’s good, I guess.”

“Yeah.
What are you doing here?”

“Huh?”

I point to the house.
“At my house.
How’d you know I live here?”

She turns around, looks at the
house, back at me and holds the book up to shield her eyes. I stand in front of
her so I block the sun. She laughs. “Oh, Carl dropped me off here after work
today. I hope you don’t mind. Like, you don’t think it’s weird or something...”

“Oh no, not at all.
I mean I really don’t mind. I’m
happy you’re here... I hope
you
don`t
think
that`s
weird.”

She blushes, looks down at her
feet. “No I don’t think...” Sophie, that beautiful girl, that woman with the
glowing eyes that make my chest feel weak, she stands up and wraps her arms
around me. Her hair smells like lilacs. “I don’t think that’s weird.” She backs
up a little, “Do you think it’s weird if I hug you?”

“No. I like when you touch me.”

She looks down at her feet again.
She doesn’t say anything and I don’t say anything and the silence keeps growing
heavier with every second we don’t say or do anything. I swing the case of beer
a little. “I
gotta
go put this inside.”

“Oh OK, well...”

“You
wanna
come in?”

“Yeah, yeah for sure.”

I put my beer in the fridge, hand
her one and turn on the TV. She just stands there, smiling at nothing, looking
around the ceiling and bumping her little fist against her hip. “You want to
sit?” I pat the seat next to me. “I don’t bite.”

She sits down.

“Do I scare you?”

She smiles, sips her beer. “No.”

“Well, wouldn’t really matter
then, would it?”

“I guess not...”

We sit there, staring at Homer
Simpson on the TV. I scratch my neck and clear my throat. “So how do you know
Carl?”

“Well, we work together.”

“Oh, right.”

“You?”

“Met him a few years ago.”

“Oh.” She scratches at her beer
label. “Are you guys... I mean have you,
were
you like... seeing each other?”

“Huh?”

“Like...”

“Huh?”

She tents her index fingers.
“Together?”

Just before I go to speak, beer
slips down the wrong tube and I cough so hard she has to pat my back. When I
can breathe again, I shake my head.
“Oh hell no.
We’re
just friends.”

“Oh, yeah I thought so. You never
know though.”

“Hey, what do you think of love
poetry?”

“What?”

“Do you like poetry?”

“Do you write?”

“What?”

“You write poetry?”

“Oh God no.”

She looks a little disappointed.
“Oh, yeah.”

“No, I was just wondering because
my friend, well
Carl
, wrote Alison
this poem today and I thought it was
kinda
gay,
and...” She winces when I say
gay
, so
I pat her leg and she looks slightly alarmed because I start speaking faster to
try and undo the whole slur thing. “Not that there’s anything wrong with gays,
I mean I like gay people, I just mean, I’m just
saying
like…”

She frowns, puts down her beer.
“What
are
you saying?”

“Uh...” I realize my hand is
still on her leg, I whip it away, rap my knuckles against the back of the
couch. “I just mean, like, poetry is lame.”

On the TV, Nelson
Muntz
“Haw
Haw”s
.

I drum my fingers on the back of
the couch and just wish to God I had kept my mouth shut.
As
more and more of that awful, heavy silence falls between us.

She looks down at her knees than
shrugs uncomfortably. “I guess.”

“Yeah.”

“Carl said though, I mean, aren’t
you
a lesbian?”

“Oh.” I shoot a finger back and
forth between us. “Is this what this is about?”

Her face
goes red
, she swallows hard, stands up and
shakes her head. “I just remembered I have to go...” She looks at a watch-less
wrist. “Check my messages. Work messages... should call them.”

“Oh, you can use my phone if...”

“No!” She walks to the door,
slips on her shoes. “At home, I have some machine stuff...messages to check.”

“Sophie, do you need a ride?” I’m
kneeling on my couch, sitting backwards and feeling my heart slip into my guts.

“I’ll just walk through the park,
my apartment is... I’ll see you later.”

Before I can say anything else
the door slams shut and I can’t bear the weight of standing up, looking out the
window and watching her walk away. I just sit there not watching The Simpsons,
not watching the News, not watching the faces of the girls I murdered pop up on
the screen with a crime hotline number flashing below their pictures. I’m not
sure how long I sit there, but when I finally look around the room it’s
completely dark except the glow from the television showing some blonde teen
pop star prancing around in her bra telling me to buy face cream.

I get up, pull a spoon out of the
cupboard and mix in the fine powder and water, cooking it up with a lighter. I
shoot half and watch the spiders on my ceiling become living polka dots. My
mind connecting them together, reminding me of kindergarten, I try putting them
together, making cats and ducks but the spiders keep moving around and I have
to stop when all I see is my mother’s face floating in the formation of their
tiny bodies. I get up, run a bath and hug my knees until the water turns cool
and gives me goose bumps. I trace my finger through those too, scratching tiny
symbols between bumps. I keep my eyes closed so I don’t have to look at myself
in the mirror as I blow dry my hair.

I think I hear my phone ringing,
but every time I turn off the blow dryer I don’t hear anything. My eyes closed,
all that heat blowing against my face, the noise tunneling in my ears, I think
of nights I couldn’t sleep. I think of lying there in the dark, my fingers
caked in dried blood. The body of a girl I kidnapped in the park, lying next to
me getting colder and colder. I would pull this hair dryer out of the bathroom
and blast hot air all over her body, in her mouth, down her throat, but no matter
how much I did it, she never stayed warm for long. Her body would not hold the
heat, not even if I set it on High and kept it on at her side. By morning all
there was were burn marks.

Downstairs in the root cellar
it’s cold like mornings in November. Everything smells like panic, blood and
piss, spit and old sweat. I sit in the chair bolted to the floor in the center
of the tiny room. I rock back and forth, jump up and down, try and pry it from
its screws. It creaks but doesn’t budge. My feet on the stairs, I turn around
to make sure the video camera is plugged in, the axe is against the wall,
handcuffs dangling on a nail. I walk back upstairs, turn off the light and
close the door. On the TV, Billy Idol says that tonight he’s “going to be John
Wayne.” I turn that off, too, cap the syringe and tuck it under a couch cushion
for later.

The night outside is dark but if
I look up I can see the stars like light coming through the fibers of the
blankets we hid under when we were young and afraid of the shapes of our
closets and shoes. That real panic we had of living nightmares, when the light
went off. We saw monsters and demons before we ever fell asleep, our parents
and caregivers, they called it childhood and playful imagination, but what if
as we got older those feelings never went away? What if those fears became more
and more real as we grew into maturity? What if the pills we swallowed to keep
us calm as children became the pills that we abused as adults to become more
like a child? To make everything OK, to make us feel happy and free again
before we had to go back to jobs we hated, fucking the person we married
because we didn’t want to be alone. What if no matter what you do, or how old
you get, you are still holding that cotton quilt over your eyes for the rest of
your life?

They say face your fears, they
say put yourself in situations that scare you, they tell you to confront your
phobias and conquer your weaknesses. But what if you aren’t strong enough? And
what if these attempts at self mastery cause you to shatter and fall apart,
what if you are tumbling down the mountain while everybody else is safely roped
together and helping one another? What do you do? You panic, you flail and you
pull down as many people as you can in your dramatic attempt to gain ground
again. It’s scary. You wouldn’t believe what most people will do in order to
obtain what they feel is sure footing.

I pat my pocket; make sure my
camera cord is in there. I have thirty inches of cable in my
hoodie
; I have to wrap some around my wrist to keep it out
of sight. I slip into the trees and grind my teeth as I watch and wait for feet
to come beating down the jogging path.

After about twenty minutes I have
to pee, so I back up a bit and as I’m squatting some girl stops, drinks from
the fountain and then keeps running. I shake my head and sigh. Murphy’s Law is
such a bitch.

Another twenty minutes passes,
I’m bored and swatting a little tree branch when I hear footsteps. I turn my
head to see and I guess I swat the little twig too hard because it comes back
and whacks me in the eye so hard I almost scream
fuck
. The footsteps turn into a person, her hood
up,
she’s walking slowly down the path, her body steering towards the water
fountain. I’m going to wrap the cord around my hands, but my eye really hurts
so I decide to just throw an elbow around her throat and drag her into the
bushes. The girl bends over the fountain and in two steps I’m behind her, but
she turns and screams in my face. I back up and am about to run back into the
trees but the girl, she shouts, “You scared the fucking shit out of me! Don’t
ever do that again, Amanda!”