Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (6 page)

Sister’s words take on a strained, metal colander tone; her voice is so tight that it will hardly even strum. “You don’t know anything about life or trying to live,” she says. “Would you like to call my insurance company and ask if they accept ferns of renewal or...wait, why am I still participating in this conversation? Tell me where you are right now and I’ll bring the paperwork and a few things of Mother’s for you to have, and that will be it for us, OK? You have no idea how long I have wished for this peace. To be able to turn on the TV and see you walking down Rodeo drive leading a goat that you painted to look like a giraffe and hear the gossip police screech about what a lunatic you are, and simply agree and change the channel. I can’t do that now. I can’t do that with you in my life; instead I have to call and try and tell you to hurry up and get the damn goat into a van or a limo or what-the-hell-ever and move away from the cameras.”

“It was actually CT who painted the goat—”

“I DON’T CARE,” she yells. “WHERE ARE YOU? THAT IS ALL I NEED TO KNOW.”

I pause. I’m fearful that Sister will not be satisfied with my location.

“We are in a bat cave inside of a cave-mansion somewhere in Nevada,” I say. Gustav looks up at me and waves a chiding finger. “No partiez, sweezheart. I have to be up early tomorrow. My friend in Milan is getting circumcised for his fortieth birthday and he commissioned ze codpiece you saw in my studio. Zat sort of ting, you deliver zat sort of ting in person.”

I am impressed; I had no idea it was a codpiece. “It’s so beautiful, Gustav. I thought it was perhaps a jeweled urn for the ashes of someone really special, like your father maybe.”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT,” cries Sis, and then she hangs up.

“Ze ashes of mine father, zat is a sad story.” Gustav points to the electric vacuums. “Zees hungry suckers, I love zhem, I have zem swarming in every room. But when my friend knocked over zee father, zey ate him before I could find zee remote to make zem stop.”

The next morning, Sister calls back. “Let’s try this again,” she says. “Where are you?”

“We’re on the bus,” I tell her. I don’t remember how or why, but I know that we are. The bus-bed CT and I have is so exceptional; it looks like a large clamshell and can even shut. It’s not good to shut it for the entire night, though, because then the oxygen we breathe starts to get a little recycled and we wake up with bad headaches.

“Okay,” she says. Her tone implies that I am completely useless. This makes me sad, so I stare into the pearly whiteness of CT’s teeth. He consciously sleeps with his mouth very open. There is a complicated reason why he does this but we’ve both forgotten what it is. “Where is the bus
headed
to?”

“I will have to let you speak to the driver, Sister.” She makes a ‘tsk’ing sound. “Thank God,” she says.

“Sister,” I beg her, “please listen. Tell me what has stricken your body. There are so many things we can do to detoxify you.”

“No,” she snaps. “You are a spoiled brat with no grip on reality. We don’t all have rich rock-star boyfriends. The hardest part of your day is figuring out what substance you’re on and deciding what is real and what is imaginary.” She sighs, and it is a loaded sigh; I hear leaves stirring inside of it, very dead, very dried leaves. They scare me, these leaves inside my sister’s voice.

“Let me get you the driver,” I whisper.

Usually Sister’s words do not trouble my eternal waters, but this news about her health has weakened my immunity. I make a mental note that later on, I should put on the crystal helmet and get inside of the sensory depravation unit. Once Wolf Rainbow got sued because a fan in Idaho climbed aboard the bus without our knowledge, got inside of the sensory depravation unit, and was not discovered until we were in Atlanta one week later. It took him a few months to speak but when he did all he could talk about was how totally grateful he was, so his family finally dropped the suit.

“Here,” I tell her, “here you go.”

“Finally,” she exclaims, “someone sane.”

“Here, his name is Fractyl Clymber, Clymber with a y.” I tap him on the shoulder and he gives a jump and spills a large thermos of purple tea. Because he is somewhat small, his arms have to stretch wide to hold onto the bus’s large steering wheel. This combined with the fact that his eyes aren’t very open makes him look like a sleepy bird.

“Sorry,” he stutters, “I thought you were something else.”

“This is my sister,” I say, pointing to my phone.

“My brother,” he nods, pointing to his phone on the dashboard. He lets out a short giggle, then looks rather distraught.

“No I mean my sister’s on the phone.”

“Cool,” he nods.

“She wants to talk to you.”

The phone is down at my side, but I can hear a sound coming from it, a scream-noise.

“If it’s about
that,”
he emphasizes, “I don’t know anything about
that
. Whoever did
that
, I’m sure...like I’m sure
that
was a
total accident.”

“No, she wants to know where we’re going.”

“Oh.” He searches the many dials of the bus’s control panel for a moment. “A sign should be coming up soon or something. These roads are totally filled with signs.”

I feel Perry, CT’s Press Agent, put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to her,” he says. I nod and hand him the phone.

It’s daytime but the bus has heavy black curtains and tinted windows, so it always seems like the sun hasn’t come up yet. I trod back to our bedroom. The bus’s thick, shaggy carpeting is soothing on my bare feet. At almost every stop we get the carpet shampooed because none of us wear shoes when we walk around inside. It feels amazing.

I crack the clamshell open a little wider to get in then lower its lid back down to where there’s still a safe amount of sliver. When I nuzzle up to CT, his leather wine suit smells like bread. In his sleep his fingers find my hair and kind of party a little.

Moments later, there’s a light knock on the clamshell. Perry slides my phone through its crack. “We’re meeting her in Dallas,” he tells me. I whisper thanks.

“Listen,” he says.

The cracked-open clamshell bed has a crescendo effect on sound, it’s even shaped like a crescendo, so when I’m inside I barely hear the first few words in someone’s sentence but then the last few words are quite loud. “If you want me to deal with her for you, thAT’S FINE, SHE SEEMS REALLY ANGRY AND MAYBE...”

“No,” I whisper. “The Worm Eternal values fortitude. I must pursue a final attempt to bring Sister enlightenment and prove my spiritual strength to the Worm Eternal.” Perry pats the top of the clam.

“OK, kiddo.”

Our conversation rousts CT. He turns and puts his lips on my neck. His lips are soft as olive oil; he decorates them like attractive women do. “I was having this dream that you were a starfish and I was feeding you tempeh bacon,” he says, and I shut the clam bed and we love each other; I let the whole thing with Sister be like grains of sand that just polish the softness of CT’s lips even softer.

There was a slight delay in meeting the sister.

After eating some pumpkin flax brittle, CT’s stomach was getting a little torn up and he requested Fractyl Clymber stop the bus for a defecation walk.

“Not
here
man,” said Fractyl, “right
here
is too close to
that,”
but after about twenty minutes Fractyl did pull over.

We all got out and practiced yoga behind the bus while CT walked ahead. Shortly after he squatted, a sports car screeched up and a man inside the car jumped out pointing a gun.

On CT’s defecation walks, he wanders until the universe gives him a sign that he is in the right place to go. Unfortunately, this time the universe had directed CT to relieve himself in the same place where the man from the car’s mother and sister had been hit and killed by a drunk driver. The man kept pointing the gun at two white crosses with “MOTHER” and “SISTER” written on them, and a large plastic floral bouquet with pictures and ribbons.

CT was trying to explain himself. “Like, I detected that this was a sacred place, man. That’s why I stopped here; it was like, the earth was saying
Here, Worship Here
, I mean this is like a shrine.”

“You were shitting on it!” the man with the gun screamed.

“Do you hierarchize organic matter?” asked CT. “Because I don’t think that’s the right way to go about things.”

Just then a policeman pulled up, and several minutes later a lot of photographers showed up too. Perry walked over to me while CT was educating the cop regarding the back-and-forth of earth and man.

“You should probably call your sister,” Perry said. “I don’t even know if we’re going to make it to Dallas on time for the show.”

I decided to go ahead and dial her number then figure out exactly what to say while the phone was ringing, but Sister picked up on the first ring.

“Sister,” I began, “there has been an unfortunate detour. You’ll have to meet us at the arena. Tell them “HASHISH420” when you go to the backstage area. That’s our code phrase. They’ll totally let you in.”

“I’m not going to your boyfriend’s concert and I’m not saying that phrase. What do you mean, detour?”

When the police showed up, everyone except Perry and CT, who were already talking to the man with the gun, had been forced to run back inside the bus and ingest any and all products that might complicate an already precarious situation. We divided them equally according to body mass, meaning Fractyl Clymber and I took the least, but it was still a pretty heavy load. Grog was already freaking out and had locked himself in the bus’s closet to masturbate.

The words coming out of my mouth were like a canoe at the tip of a waterfall. I saw what was ahead but was unable to stop it. I am always for truth but with Sister sometimes the truth has to be dressed up a little bit, not hidden but wrapped up in a way that makes it better, like a Christmas present. I was feeling very chatty though, and the sweat on my tongue didn’t help. Everything just poured out.

“CT accidentally relieved himself on this grave, and now a lot of people are taking my picture.” The flashes from the paparazzi’s light bulbs were bright and painful but I couldn’t stop staring at them. I moved closer to the flash. “I’m like a moth or something right now,” I told her. She started crying and then Perry grabbed the phone and told me to get a full-body cape for CT from the bus closet. CT was so into sharing the truth of the Worm Eternal that he had not yet proceeded to tie up the bottom and fly of his leather suit.

“Grog’s in the closet masturbating,” I told Perry. “He’s really freaked.”

Perry sighed and nodded. “You stay put. I’ll get it.”

When we finally arrive at the arena, the noise of the crowd doing the Howl of the Wolf is deafening. Their pack call drowns out the opening band, an experimental metal group utilizing electric bongos.

The arena’s head of security approaches us. He’s shivering with fear. “You’ve got to get out there,” he pleads to CT, his voice trembling, “I’ve never seen a crowd get this crazy, and I’ve worked this arena for almost thirty years.”

CT throws off his cape and uses his arm to make a sweeping motion, like he’s violently clearing a table. “No problemo,” he says, “this is my gig, man. Don’t even worry about it.” The fly of his leather suit is still open as he walks onstage; he tends to forget about things like that, but there is no time. Also, since the crowd is already worked into such a manic rage, what better to satiate them than the sight of CT’s loveworm? It is like his music: hard yet soft.

CT’s voice bleeds through the loudspeaker.

“People of earth: I come to you as an ambassador...from the planet of ROCK!”

With that, Grog slams the bass and the drums are off and running like a wild, hungry dog.

Let me tell you about the sound of Wolf Rainbow.

It is loud but it is a harmonious loudness. It is like the most beautiful woman in the world beating you up with her hair.

At the concerts of Wolf Rainbow, I curl up in a little ball like I’m trying to keep myself from vomiting. But what I’m really trying to do is hold on. When I hear CT’s voice going up through the clouds and then back down and up again at a dizzying rate, like an airplane showing off, I can’t help but feel that I’m suspended on the edge of a cliff or somewhere similar where the beauty before me comes with the price of danger. A lot of people who know about the view from the tip-top of a bridge or tall building are dead, because they climbed up in order to jump off. But sometimes I wonder if they truly planned on jumping or if the view was just so beautiful that they realized what a wide big net beauty is, and then wanted so badly to be caught by it. That’s how I feel about Wolf Rainbow–I’m afraid of falling into it, becoming the music and then losing myself there.

At this moment I feel a short kick at my ribs. Sister. She must have said HASHISH420.

“Look at your pupils. Do you need a doctor?”

I shake my head and get up, attempting to hug her.

She steps backwards and covers her torso protectively. “Please stay away. Let’s just get this done. What a
complete nightmare
. Do you know that reporters get a hold of my cell phone number? No matter how many times I change it? Normally I only pick up for people I know, which is, well, you, and doctors’ offices, but this time I answered every call. “Yes,” I told them, “I do have a comment on the latest fiasco: you and your boyfriend are crazy and I am publicly disowning you.”

“We got married,” I said. “Remember?” I would’ve invited Sister to the wedding if there had been time, but I didn’t actually become aware of the ceremony until it had already happened. Mescaline is crazy that way. Grog showed me a video, though. CT and I were slathered with divine jelly and rebirthed together as twins from the Womb of the Worm.

Sister stretches out her arm, handing me a manila folder with a pen attached. “I’ll show you where to sign.” Suddenly she cringes and rubs her temples. The band is starting in on a particularly heavy number titled “Reign of the Pig Women.” “My God,” she whimpers, “Do you have some aspirin, some water?”