Sinners Circle (4 page)

“Oh?” I’m sort of
creeped
out that she is comparing me to a fictional
character and what’s worse is that character is a child.

She kisses me hard. “I’m going to
fuck the shit out of you tonight.”

I brush the hair away from her
face, slipping my hands loosely around her neck. If you kneel on somebody’s
chest, cover their nose and mouth, and push their jaw upwards you can induce
fatal asphyxiation without any visible injuries.

“Is that so?”

She rubs a hand across my chest,
cups one of my breasts and licks the side of my face. “Come.
My
place tonight.
You can stay, but I need you gone by morning.”

“Don’t worry.” I touch her chest,
feel her heart beating. “You won’t even hear me leave.”

My
mother told me that when I was born, we laid in bed for those first three days.
She said I spent the entire time with my eyes closed, my hands not leaving her
hair. She took her baths sitting on the edge of the mattress, her feet in a
washtub as Marcy ran a sponge down her back. We lay there on that dusty sunken
pad of broken springs, my mother spooning the meals brought to her while I fed
from her breasts, staring wide eyed into nothing. On the morning of the fourth
day we rose because somewhere between the break of night and all its darkness
and the blue beginnings of dawn, her warm breast slipped from my mouth and I
cried for the first time. Ancient blankets bundled around
me,
I sneezed from all the dust buried in the wool. My mother said she picked me
up, carried me to the window and pointed to the still fields surrounding that
dead house. She told me she was looking at the stars as they faded out of the
sky, saying my name to herself over and over as each one went back into the
black of space and all its emptiness. She said she didn’t care, because I was
the only light needed, the rising sun come to chase away the darkness. She said
she told me this, but when she took me off her shoulder and cradled me in her
arms, I was asleep. And soon, so was she.

I was crawling when the wrecking
ball came. It shattered the living room with one swoop. Marcy was on the
toilet, my mom chucking corn in the kitchen while I explored the shadows of
empty cupboards. Depending on how drunk she was, the story always changed when
she told it to me years later. Sometimes the ball was far from me, sometimes
close, but how we left the place was always the same. We always ran out the
back door, my mother and I squeezed together, chest to chest, Marcy behind,
stiff strips of wheat whipping us raw as we tore through the fields. None of us
had dry eyes when the construction workers chased us down. None of us had any
shoes on when the sheriff put us in his car.

When the former owners of the
house came into the police station and saw mom and Marcy, heard me screaming in
the social work room, they decided not to press charges. They gave mom two
hundred dollars and the phone number of their church’s minister. Mom took the
money but she threw the seven digits in the trash after they left.

“How’s
your boss, how’s he doing these days?”

“Harry? He’s fine.” I drop a dish
in the soapy water, pull the plug and let it drain a little before turning the
tap to hot and filling the sink back up.

Marcy pushes her wheelchair
towards the miniature Christmas village, each tiny glass house lined up neatly
beside the other on top of an old coffee table.
“How’s about
the other
fellas
in your department?
You got
any boys you’d like to bring back to introduce me to?”

I turn off the tap.
“In customer service?
Naw
Marcy,
you wouldn’t be interested in meeting any of the people I work with.”

She pinches the cotton sticking
out the chimney of a miniature church. “Oh come on now. I wouldn’t mind. I
haven’t seen you bring home a fellow in years.
Just those friends
of yours.”
She turns her wheelchair around. “Those
girls
...”

I drop a pot in the water, steam
rising, burning into my eyes. “Isn’t
As
The World Turns
on?”

She looks at the cuckoo clock
above her TV. “About ten minutes still.” She sits there, breath in her chest,
frowning and drumming her fingers on the gray rubber of the chair’s wheels. I
say, “You wouldn’t want to meet any of the guys I work with.”

“Huh?” She looks at the linoleum.
“Why?
They a horny bunch or something?”

I sigh, drop a handful of forks and knives in
the sink, water splashing the stomach of my t-shirt, “All boys are, aren’t
they?”

She sounds nervous when she
laughs, her voice fading to mumbles mid sentence. “That’s what your mother
always used to say about that...”

“Well,” I drop another handful of
silverware in the sink, that sound of steel scraping hard against partially
submerged dishes. “She was right, I guess.”

Marcy wheels over to the couch,
picks up the remote control, looks at the clock and wheels back to where I’m
standing. “I’d like to see you with someone. I’d like to be around for a
wedding.”

She frowns, looks down at her
slippered
feet. “You know that.”

Chunks of old spaghetti sauce
float to the top of the water. They look like flakes of dried blood. I run more
hot water, squeezing the bottle of dish soap into the stream. “Marcy, it’s just
not... I’m not
ready
, you know? Some
people aren’t maybe meant for
lov
—meant for marriage.
I’m one of those people, I’m...”

“Amanda Troy! You look at me
right now!”

I bow my head and turn off the
tap.

“Amanda Francis,
look
at me right now!”

I look at her. Her little fists
knotted like lumpy balls of yarn, her blonde hair gray at the roots. She has
the same eyes as my mom; the same eyes as me. We have almost the exact same
mouth, except I have three scars on my chin, and one long one beside my mouth.
These are claw marks from the first girl that I raped and murdered. She kept
screaming through the whole thing, but the real problem was: I don’t have a
penis. Chicks will lay there while a dude drives hard, banging away balls deep
in her. Half the time girls don’t say anything because they don’t want to get
popped in the head by a guy who’s three times stronger than they are. They
don’t want to risk a shattered nose, broken jaw, even then, laying spread eagle
in the bushes, spirits shattering with every thrust, their vanity is still
telling them not to piss him off because they could wind up with a bald patch,
or a bruise, or a broken jaw. But in reality, there is nothing more violent and
torturous than lesbian rape. Because most women don’t get off as simply as men
and you’re working with a different set of genitals than guys, so there’s a lot
of other things you have to use to compensate. Anyway, afterwards I choked her
to death and then broke her neck. I was so scared I’d get caught, but blood was
coming out of my face like a faucet so I had no choice but to go to the
emergency room. When they glued the cuts together, when the nurses all gathered
around me stroking my hair and telling me it was going to be alright, that I
was beautiful and they were so sorry, I had the same look in my eyes as Marcy
does right now.

“Don’t you
ever
say
that!
Your mother would say that!
I’d hear her say that over and over again.
Every day the same
thing, the same ‘I don’t deserve love’ garbage!”

In the emergency room, I told
them I was raped. When I showed up in triage with five deep slashes on the back
of my shoulder, fingernail gashes splitting my face open, they got Victims
Assistance to pay for a new outfit. A week later the cops called me up and I
got twenty five hundred dollars from Crime Stoppers for pointing out the right
guy in a police
line up
.
Turns out
the guy really was
a rapist, and after I randomly fingered him, he
admitted to the cops everything he’d done to some woman in the park. The women
of this city really should be thanking me.

“You’re
beautiful
! Amanda, you are a beautiful person, inside and out.
Don’t you go second guessing that, second guessing yourself around
me
!
”

I scratch my neck, hot water
dripping down the collar of my t-shirt absorbing into my bra. “Thank you,
Marcy.”

She holds her glare at me for a
moment, then wheels back over to the couch and turns on the TV. The volume is
nearly deafening and I have to strain to hear her say, “Give me strength,
Francis.”

I lean back over the sink and
slap a dish towel over my shoulder. “Shouldn’t you be asking God?”

She looks at me like I’ve said
‘fuck’ in church. “Now why would I do a crazy thing like that?”

If we let them
use the bathroom, customers would come in the bathroom, no pun intended, and
leave the place coated in
jizz
. Take for instance
this
guy,
he’s been in the store for a solid four
hours. A replica Great Dane penis
toy
the size of a
thermos and a pig-tail butt-plug tucked under each arm, he slips his middle
finger in and out of the silicone Audrey Hollander ass /pussy on the shelf.
Every twenty minutes or so he moves down a model, poking a wiggly finger in and
out of the little plastic circle cut out of every box. He’s finger banging
Nikki Benz, digging around inside Ginger Lynn’s asshole, tickling Mary Carey’s
rubber clit, he skips
Jada
Fire and moves on to pinch
Silvia Saint’s swollen cunt lips, all the while coughing into his fist. I’d ask
him to stop or please leave, but he’s bringing items to the till, dropping them
on the table and running back to the shelves. This guy comes in every couple
weeks, looking like he hasn’t slept, looking like he hasn’t eaten anything
except hooker pussy. It’s true, every time he wanders in here, he looks thinner
and thinner. I don’t know his name, and I don’t think I want to. All I know is
he comes in here, drops a few hundred dollars on porn and takes Lilly back to
his motel room when he can afford it. It only sucks because Lilly, one of the
many prostitutes that
hangs
around the side of the
store at night, is the only girl I actually sort of like. It’s kind of
depressing when I think about it; depressing in the sense that an eighteen year
old runaway turned prostitute, who does way too much coke and smokes like a
Nazi is the only person I am capable of having partial feelings for. Yeah, it’s
sort of depressing when I think about it, so mostly I try not to. I just close
my eyes and ride the waves of euphoria whenever she’s down there, kissing and
sucking on whatever I’ve got my pants pulled down past.

“How much for that?”
The skinny guy, the
silicone finger banger points behind me. I grab a vinyl blindfold off the wall.

“Sixteen bucks.”

He nods, gets his wallet out from the back of his sagging
jeans. “Kay, I’ll take two of those.”

I pull another one down, ring in his total.

He squints, coughs into his fist and puts down his credit
card. His eyes are so bloodshot they
look like they could pop at any minute.

When he leaves, Harry comes out of his office, stumbling
toward me, eyes on a clipboard he’s got firm in his hands. “Amanda, did we sell
out of those gag balls already?” He scratches his head and hands the clipboard
to me. “Says we have three in stock still, but...” He turns to where the gags
are shelved. “...I can’t find them any place.”

“Hmm, yeah I remember selling some last week but...” I study
the inventory. According to this list we have a serious shortage of blow up
dolls and BDSM bed restraints.

He takes the clipboard back.
“Probably
stolen.
Keep a closer eye out here, I guess.” He scratches his head,
rubs a hand down the shirt buttons of his gut and looks at his watch. “Break
time, get out of here. See you in twenty.”

I grab my coat from under the till and feel the pockets for
my cigarettes on my way out the back. I light one as I lean against the
building, blowing blue smoke out of my lungs as I look up at where the stars
are supposed to be. Inner city like this, it’s almost impossible to see
anything through the unending luminescence and pollution amassing overhead.
Almost impossible to see anything beautiful and glowing above you,
burning from millions of miles away.
In this city, you look up and see
only patrolling helicopters circling with their spotlights switched on, or the
wings of airplanes blinking red as they take off, as they come in. It makes me glad to know I live far enough
away from the city that I can still gaze up at the night sky and see the beauty
of midnight. It makes me glad to know I live far enough way, but close enough
to hurt it.

“Well hello there, stranger!” Lilly appears from the side of
the building, the fingertips of an outstretched hand drag lightly along the
brick as she walks towards me in red heels.

“
Hiya
, Lil.” I get out a cigarette
and hand it to her.

“Why thank you, love. How’s work?” She leans against the
building, close enough that our shoulders touch. Her tiny leather jacket
presses soundlessly against my cotton zipper sweater.

“It goes.
You?”

She says “Ha ha
ha
” pausing between
each ‘ha’ for a full second.
“Sucks
dick
.”
This time she really does laugh, but only for
pretend.

I hand her my lighter. “Didn’t go home with
what’s his nuts
?”

The flame lighting up her face, she’s stunning. Gorgeous in
that wasted junkie way most nihilistic German artists or depressed euro trash
models look. Only she’s got blonde hair instead of black and skin so flawless
you have to stare hard to see that the dark under her eyes isn’t from smudged
makeup, but from lack of sleep. She shakes her head, “No, he tried taking me
back. But I told him I’m not going there for any less than sixty-five.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so instead he gave me thirty.”

“For what?”

She shrugs, taps the ash off her smoke.
“Quick
hand and a blow.”

“Cool.”

“Not really. That fucker’s into some weird shit. I don’t know
if I would go back with him even if he did have the cash.” She takes a drag.
“Well, for eighty maybe, hundred for sure.”

“Yeah, guy seems a little weird.”

“Why? He ever try picking you up?” I can feel her tense up beside
me, but she relaxes when I tell her no. He’s never tried paying me for sex.

“Good.” She taps the ash off again. “Weird shit I tell you.
That fucker’s into some weird shit.”

“Like how?”

“Well, I don’t know. In my line of work you see it all the
time. These guys are so addicted to sucking and fucking, it’s like each time
you see them it gets worse and worse. Six months into one regular and he’ll be
parked in an alley while you blow guys. Just parked there watching you, waiting
for you to finish sucking strangers dicks so you can go over to him and squeeze
the cum
out of the rubbers you used all over his face.
And he’ll just sit there for like two hours, sitting in his car and not wiping
the cum
off his face. So every time you empty a rubber on
his face it just gets messier and messier, all that goop dripping in his eyes,
pooling in the corners of his mouth. He’s inhaling semen up his goddamn
nostrils
.”

“Who?
This guy?”
I hike a thumb over my shoulder at the store. “The guy who was just in here
does that?”

“No, no. Not him.
Another guy.”

“Oh, OK.”

“No, what that guy who was just in there is into is worse.
Well, not really
worse
worse
, but definitely weirder.”

“How do you figure?”

She laughs, taps the ash and takes a drag. “Well, like I
said, I definitely wouldn’t go back to his place for anything less than a
hundred now. Not after last time.”

I laugh. “Lil, are you
gonna
tell
me or what?”

“Yeah, yeah.”
She waves some smoke away
from her face. “Shit, that just got in my eye.”

“Yeah, I hate when that happens.”

“It
hurts
,
goddamn!” She bends over for a second, her hand to her face,
then
leans back against the wall, her leather jacket reflecting dull shades from the
building’s security lights.

“What’s his name?”

She rubs her eye with the knuckle of her finger. “Rick.”

“Oh. Gross.”

She laughs, slaps my arm. “I
know
, right?”

“Anyways, this guy Rick,
last
time he picks me up, yeah? And he takes me back to this real seedy motel. Like
roaches in the tub sort of seedy,
ya
know?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, we’re in the room and he’s like ‘One sec.’
So
I sit on the bed and wait for him to come back and when
he does, he’s carrying this birdcage, with a towel over it. He puts it down,
right, he takes the towel off and the second he does this damn bird starts
tweeting like a crazy thing. So I’m sitting there wondering what the hell he
wants me to do with this damn bird. I’m thinking
,
there’s no way I’m putting that fucking bird in my pussy or some shit. He’s
just standing there, right, not doing anything, and I start to get scared that
like maybe he’s going to bite the
fuckin
’ things head
off,
Ozzy
Osborne style,
ya
know? I start to get scared maybe he’s some sort of animal torturing Satanist
motherfucker and he’s going to sacrifice me right there on that ugly
fuckin
’ bed in that dirty
fuckin
’
room.” She takes a drag of her cigarette, butts it out and flicks it out into
the alley. “Anyway, after a couple real slow minutes he opens the cage, and I’m
ready to bolt at this point because I’m so freaked out at what he might do.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“I know, right? So, he opens the cage and grabs the bird...”

“What kind of bird?”

“Oh, I don’t know. No wait, yeah, it was a pigeon.”

“A pigeon?”

“Yeah, a goddamn pigeon?
What you don’t believe
me?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just like... pigeons are dirty,
ya
know?”

“I
know
, that`s why
I was so goddamn freaked out by it... So he takes out the pigeon and hands it
to me. I’m like ‘what the fuck?’ but I don’t say anything because this guy pays
good money and I’ve got this fucking diseased animal in my hands and I have no
idea what’s going on or how the fuck I’m
gonna
get
him off with this ugly thing...”

“Rats of the sky.”

“Huh?”

“Pigeons.
They’re the rats of the
sky.”

She laughs, smiling so big I can see all her teeth. “I
know
, I know!”

“So what?
Did he make you eat it?
Hold it while he fucked you?”

She waves her hand, tosses back some hair and gestures to me
for another cigarette. I light it in my mouth and pass it to her.

“No, nothing like that.
Worse.
He got down on his knees, put his hands behind his back and said ‘I want you to
swing it in circles. Just swing it in circles by the feet so the wings can
touch my cock, but only at the end, before I come. I don’t want to feel the
feathers on my cock until I’m about to come. I just want to feel the wind
first.’ So I hold its feet and start swinging the thing around and around in
circles. The whole time he’s got his eyes shut, just moaning and moaning. I go
faster and faster, the bird flapping its wings, not making a
fuckin
’ sound. I felt
kinda
bad,
but I just wanted to get it over with, so I kept doing it.”

She takes a deep drag off the cigarette and pulls a strand of
blonde hair out of the corner of her mouth. “Finally he shouts ‘
I’m coming! I’m coming!
’ The wings
barely graze his dick and he shoots all over the rug, I’m talking projectile
orgasm release. This weird fucker, he blows on the rug and even gets a little
on my boots, which I didn’t really care about because I don’t really like those
boots anyway. But he gets it on them just the same. After that...” She takes an
anxious drag, the orange cherry on the end of her smoke glowing bright before
ash covers it. “Well, after that he just pulls up his pants, tosses some
twenties on the bed and leaves. He
leaves
me in his own goddamn room still holding this dizzy
fuckin
’
bird. So that’s why I don’t think I’ll go back with him anymore.
Not for less than a hundred anyway.”

I light a smoke, roll a pebble under my sneaker. “So, what
happened to the bird?”

“Oh. I just put him out on the deck as I was leaving. I
watched him trip around for a couple seconds. Then he flew off.”

I laugh. She pinches my arm. “
Ow
!
Lil!”

“Poor thing.
I wonder what was going
through its mind as it flew around the city. I mean, if pigeons
can
talk to each other like we do, I
wonder what
that
one would say, and
how the hell the other ones peeking around in the park for bread crumbs and
French fries, how
they
would
interpret the story.”

I pinch her arm back. “No idea.”

She’s quiet for a minute. I check my watch; my shift starts
again in five minutes. “Well, I
gotta
go back in. Pay
the bills. You know.”