Everything comes crashing down. The walls, your pictures, cantaloupes, the Frigidaire, the catscratch post, it all comes crash!
Down to the floor. Nothing lands on your bed, where your pretty child lies, and nothing lands on the cat. The rest is dust and rubble, the smut in the air settling in a ring around the bed, the fucking cat. I yack and splutter and rub the asbestos into my eyes and wonder why I’m angry still, and still here in this shellshocked house, and then I punch you in the neck,
and slip in milk, and fall onto a carving knife wedged beneath a stack of Sunset magazines. The knife goes in and skates off my ribs-zip, xylophone- up into the armpit through the rotator,
The artery, punch- I’m staring at its sated tip thrust out beneath my collarbone.
‘You,’ you say, flailing in the wreckage past the fallen Frigidaire, the overripe cantaloupe in the air. You can’t think of anything horrible enough to call me, I guess. You get up, and climb onto the smoking fridge. ‘That fucking hurt,’ you scream, and I try to indicate my shoulder.
Once I jerk it around the bastard starts squirting; prrt, prrt, it says, my heartbeat Pollacking your dusty boots. ‘Oh,’ I say, and poke at it. Hold my fingers around the knife. The squirt flings farther because of this, and splots onto your stupid hands. ‘Oh, shit,’ I say.
‘I’ve got it,’ you say in half a voice, a Eureka not- more like my geysering life is a long ball.
‘Got it,’ I wonder, ‘you’ve got it?’
‘It’s a trust issue.’ You’re babbling, surely. ‘I’m going to turn and fall backwards, and you’re going to catch me.’
‘What? Why would I catch you?’
‘Then we can begin to work on what’s really wrong,’ you say, nodding sagely. I jam a finger into my wound and try to spray your stupid face with blood but it just hurts like fuck and I pass out for a second.
‘Oooohhhh,’ I am saying when I come back, and then you land on me, you stupid crazy, and my nose goes into your assbone and my crown goes into the floor and my knife goes up into your seat and jams itself to the hilt into my armpit, thank you very much!
I pass out again.
When I come back I am laughing hysterically, and you are screaming like no other and the roof caves in on us.
Just one more time, God. Just right in the stupid neck once more, and then I’ll go to Hell.
I’ll pack you a lunch and you can come with me.
And God comes by and says HEY, SO WHAT DID YOU THINK?
‘What,’ I say to God, looking about. ‘Think of what?’
EVOLUTION, OR INTELLIGENT DESIGN?
‘Um, well... which did you like?’
COME ON, DON’T BE A SHIT, says God, I MEAN, COME ON.
‘Well...’
OUT WITH IT.
‘What about my dying wish?’
THE NECKPUNCH?
‘Yeah.’
OH COME ON, God says.
‘Well, can I just watch it again?’
JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION.
‘Please?’
OH, God says, VERY WELL.
‘Slow motion,’ I say.
And there it is, in Thunderdome Widescreen Catharsis Theatre, and your whole neck changes shape like rutabegas in Playdough and you flop over the Frigidaire, your legs wide and plumbing flashed beneath your nightrobe.
Georgia Okeefe quivers from the neckpunch, claps her wings and sends the shockwave on. ‘Man,’ I say. ‘Didn’t see that the first time.’
SO, says God.
‘Yeah. So.. evolution, I guess.’
WHY, WERE YOU TAUGHT EVOLUTION?
‘Aw, who knows. Yeah.’
AW... THOUGHT SO.
‘Thanks for that,’ I say, gesturing toward your vanished replay.
THE COCKSHOT? NO PROBLEM.
‘Do you make words, like that? Did you make the word cockshot?’
DID I… WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
‘You don’t make words?’
I MAKE STARLIGHT AND MOUNTAINS AND COMETS AND FIRE AND ONCE I MADE A FEW MONKEYS SO THEY’D SHARPEN STICKS AND STONES AND NOW THEY ASK ME DUMB FUCKING QUESTIONS WHEN THEY SHOULD BE DEAD, I MEAN COME ON.
‘So it was evolution. And, you don’t make words.’
I MAKE WARS, LITTLE HUMAN.
I have the idea this is a joke, a vast self-awareness I’m too frail to comprehend, so I laugh at God. I laugh and laugh and then I see your holes, neckpunch-flexed like a Thangsgiving turkey in my mind and I laugh so hard I’ve gone completely nuts. ‘Wars,’ I say. ‘He makes wars,’ and laugh and laugh and laugh.
HEY, God says, WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING ABOUT?
‘War,’ I say.
YOU’RE LAUGHING ABOUT WAR?
‘War. You know, war.’
YOU WANT TO GO GET A DRINK?
‘Shit yeah,’ I say to God.
He comes and gets me from the rubble, and you are nowhere to be seen when that slab of floor tips off me onto the Frigidaire. The walls are mostly gone, but your magic holds over the bed, and over the cat, beating against your magic, bloodying itself on your magic trying to get out. Your lovely child sleeps on, a bubble of health inside the wreckage, and you are nowhere to be seen.
‘Hey,’ I say to God, ‘what do we do about her?’
God looks at your glorious child, sucking her thumb, and shrugs. Oh, wait. He is not God. He is Mr. Vance, from upstairs. God doesn’t wear waders and long underwear. ‘Where’s her mother?’ I ask helplessly, and Mr. Vance shrugs again. He turns and considers the cat for a moment before ambling off, hands twitching for his pipe.
I always was your oil, your filth.
I step on the voices of your peeves and fears and you just loved me for it.
I reach down and ease my hand into your magic and it squeals, and stretches, and snaps, and the cat comes yowling furballing out and zips up me like a fucking tree, every claw going yards into my flesh, until it’s at the top and shredding my scalp for jerky strips.
I hit the cat, and it hits the wall and rolls down the rubble and it isn’t moving. Oh, you are going to be furious.
My shoulder seems all right, muscle-sore but whole, no carving knife shoved clear through it, just a low, dull burn. I slide my hand into your magic around your bed, and burst it too, and gather your beautiful child to me and climb out the windowsores into the night. Mr. Vance is there, and three people I don’t recognize, and Julianna.
I walk over and deliver your precious child to Jule, and she says nothing.
‘I killed the cat,’ I tell her.
‘Oh no,’ Jule breathes, and peers at me. At the ruin of your building. ‘That’s why?’
I sigh. ‘No. I killed the cat after.’
‘Oh no,’ she repeats.
‘No shit,’ I say, ‘tell me about it.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Don’t know. Stupid crazy... she stabbed herself with the knife that killed me. I was supposed to catch her.’
‘Why didn’t you catch her, El?’
‘What?’
‘Why didn’t you catch her?’
‘The fuck should I know,’ I growl. ‘The fuck should I do around her?’ I realize I’m going to start crying, and tousle your pretty child’s hair, and put my hand on Julianna’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, okay?’
I walk off.
I find Him in Moriart’s, eating peanuts
‘So the Tower of Babel,’ I say after four shots, and God interrupts me.
‘Jesus, why the Bible? I mean come on, I say some things and you’ve gone and burnt out your ancestral memories, cant be bothered to tell stories to your children, and you write down some of what I said and some of what cousin Dovid did and boom, next thing, no one ever asks me anything but Bible trivia! Take this fucking shot and shut up.’
Jagermeister tastes like the good cold medicine. My stomach complains. Fuck you, I say to my stomach. I died earlier, and he’s buying. ‘Okay, but what’s hysterical, and what’s not?’
‘Lenny Bruce, and anyone else.’
‘Historical. You heard me. Historical, historical.’
‘W.C. Fields, now there was a funny fucker, should’ve taken him out for drinks. Water, Jesus, he wouldn’t drink water, what kind of person doesn’t drink water?’
‘Frenchmen,’ I say, and slosh beer down onto the Jagermeister.
‘Someone offered him water, and he says, I never touch the stuff… fish fuck in it. Fish fuck in it. I mean come on! W.C. Fields and Leny Bruce. Take this shot.’
‘Fuck you, God,’ I say once said shot has taken me beyond the edge of reason. After trying not to throw up for what feels like minutes, after wondering where you and the carving knife went.
‘Oh, that’s original, Moses.’
A table of stringy drunks looks over, entranced by the phrase they’ve heard. fuck you, god, they mouth to themselves in silent chorus. I am invigorated.
‘Doublefuck you, God, and the myth you rode in on.’ Ooh, that one felt good.
‘Okay,’ God says, ‘okay…’
‘Go shit in the sea, my name is El, I’m an onanist!’
‘Good, good. Take this shot.’
‘Spillin seed, Yahweh!’ I don’t know what happens after this, but I wake up like a lead coffin on a bed I can’t imagine where, sweatstuck to a starch-prickly cotton comforter, piss pressing on my organs like a gutwound, dick stiff and utterly confused.
The booze wore off, and snap!
I’m awake. I go and sit down to pee, and think I’ll die, and drink sinkwater, and throw up into the shower, and drink sinkwater, and throw up into the sink, and cascade back in and fall asleep on the creepy bed. I wonder if this is God’s house.
God needs to clean his shower. And his fucking sink.
When I wake up again I can keep the sinkwater down, and there is a note on the floor.
El, it says in green Sharpie, you have the stomach of a Jew. Don’t worry, I like Jews. They’re my people. The knife will be there, later. She won’t be, perhaps. You should be so lucky.
Your soul is mine,
God.
PS, The tower of Babel was hysterical. Humor is misunderstanding.
PPS, Your great-great grandfather made the word cockshot.
I pick up the note and fold it once carefully, and tuck it into the coat I am wearing. What the fuck. Maybe it is God’s coat, but it is not my coat. It is a white leather coat, and the left cuff says Motor It in red stitching. There is a mirror in the hallway.
Besides the jacket, I am wearing: my teeshirt (Jeff Smith’s Bone), a thin red tie, a leather fannypack that matches the jacket, and my jeans, which have had pinstripes squiggles down them in what seems to be Whiteout.
My hair is cut into a wide mohawk, replete with shaved steps up either temple. My eyebrows have been shaved off, and my forehead says, backwards, in green Sharpie COCKSHOT!
‘Thank you, grandpa,’ I rasp, my voice an ugly, basement voice. A woman comes out of the door next to the mirror. Her neck, her knuckles, are humming with speed. Her eyes are too wide and she stares at me.
‘God,’ says the woman.
‘Yes,’ I rasp, ‘it was He, that fucker.’
‘You want a drink?’
‘No.’
‘You want a fuck?’
‘Here,’ I say, and press the note into her flighty palm.
She opens it and reads it. Looks at me. ‘I ain’t fucking you for this.’ I walk to the end of the hall and find a staircase, and find a landing, and find a staircase, and find a hallway, and find a door, and come outside.
Oh, Man. I’m in Salt Lake City.
The mountains hang over the downtown Lego set like a storm, and the streets are too wide. People are driving like geriatric assholes. I almost go back up and ask for that drink, but look for my wallet instead.
It’s there, and I am sure there is somewhere I can pay to have my head shaved. Maybe they’ll let me wash my face as well.
‘You, kid,’ a voice says from a doorway, ‘look stupider than anything.’
‘Yeah?’ I say.
‘Stupider than fuck,’ the voice says, the owner bulking up out of the shadows.
‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I say, and start to turn.
‘Stupider than fancy,’ Jack says, filling the doorway with his frame. ‘Stupider than owes me three grand, El.’
‘Stupider than even that?’
‘Uh-huh,’ the Poly-Ute growls, and he was made to growl, he’s as big as Range Rover kittens, as big as fatass trees might be, if you tattoeed them neck to wrists and gifted them with violence. Crushing limbs and a sawnoff cue in his workboots. Straight razor in his longlong hair.
‘So,’ I sigh, ‘is this coincidence, or what?’
‘Nah,’ he says, edging into the light. ‘God tol’ me where to find your ass. Come on, Cockshot.’
‘Man,’ I say. An Escalade comes around the corner and stops, and Jack gets into the passenger’s, doesn’t even look at me. I get into the back right. ‘You going to call me Cockshot?’
‘Who are we to resist God’s will?’ Jack stabs my forehead with a finger like a hardbrown twinkie. ‘Now shut the fuck up.’
God sold me out to Giant Jack. And he shaved off my eyebrows. I put my fingers in my ears, and somehow fall asleep.
You come back from where you go to heal and walk out of Julianna’s coat closet, rubbing your ass through a tear in your nightrobe. ‘Jule,’ you cry wearily, and then ‘Hannah?’
And there she is, your gorgeous child, in a Van Halen teeshirt and a belt, and you scoop her up and cry into her neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ you tell her, harshly, ‘I’m so sorry, baby, honeypumpkin babybear, I’m so sorry.’
‘Hey,’ she says, ‘look at this!’ and she holds her breath and starts to turn red.
‘Hannah, don’t do it,’ Jule barks from the next room, and there are the frantic sounds of her getting up. ‘Hannah!’
‘Mmph!’ says Hannah, and belches a footlong tongue of flame into the air toward you. ‘It was little,’ she shrieks, ‘you messed it up!’
‘Goddamnit,’ Jule says, and bursts into the hallway, ‘not in the house!’
‘If I do it outside, you said, they’ll burn me at the stake.’
‘Why are you doing it at all?’
‘Ooh, Auntie Jule!’ says your precious child, and stalks toward the kitchen.
You stare after her, cutting sobs and wiping at your cheeks. ‘So,’ you say.
‘So,’ says Julianna.
‘Thank you.’
‘I know, kiddo.’
‘The cops?’
‘Probably want to talk to you. I took her before they came.’
‘El?’
Jule shrugs. ‘He got her out.’
‘Fucker punched me in the neck.’
‘You,’ Jule starts, then takes a ragged breath. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, we needed to talk, but he wouldn’t, and I got so mad, and the walls burst, and the Frigidaire fell over, and El punched me, Jule! Right in the neck!’
‘Honey,’ Julianna sighs, ‘if you burst the walls on me I’d punch you too.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
‘You scare me, kiddo. Don’t scare me. It’s me, it’s Jule? Your friend?’
You collapse against the wall. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, its all so crazy, I can’t look at it when its happening, its crazy, I think he died, Jule, died. He was squirting blood and I was crazy and I said he had to catch me, and Hannah, oh God Hannah…’
‘Ssh,’ says Jule, and comes and cradles you carefully, careful for thorns, or fangs. ‘Ssh, its okay, kiddo, I know.’
‘Its all fucked up.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘No, you don’t know I got a knife in my ass, Jule, you…’
‘Hey,’ your beautiful child says from a doorway. She is wearing underwear and a knit wool hat. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing, cuddle, little beanbagbear. Nothing, baby, momma’s alright.’
‘Kay,’ she says, and disappears.
‘Honey,’ Jule says. ‘If I tell you something, you promise to leave the walls up?’
‘Huh,’ you manage, around a sob.
‘The fridge too?’
‘Jesus, Jule, what?’
‘El,’ she sighs. ‘El killed your cat.’
‘Sparfmeef,’ you breathe. ‘Sparfmeeeeef?’ You get up, and walk around in a circle. ‘Clothes,’ you say, and Jule clambers away from your now-unhealthy glow. You hear closets open. ‘Hannah!’
‘Whuh,’ she asks, from another doorway. She is wearing a raincoat and a man’s pair of cowboy boots, blue coyotes picked out on the leather.
‘Clothes, babykins. Clothes, now, you hear, pumpkinbear?’
‘No clothes, got my pajamas.’
‘Then pajamas, dunklebunny. Pajamas. Hurry, hear?’
‘Hey,’ your glorious child says, ‘don’t get mad, kay? You’re funny colors.’
‘Okay, babybear, little lighthouse, okay. Just hurry, hear?’
‘Kay,’ she says, and passes Julianna in the hall. Jule hands you a pair of pedallers and a hoodie, socks, Keds, teeshirt that says I can’t believe I ate the whole thing, hairtie, sunglasses.
‘Car keys,’ you say to her.
‘Huh-uh, no, kiddo.’
‘Car keys.’
‘No, fuck that, you’re collapsing houses and disappearing you can’t use my car not ever.’
You growl.
‘Uh-huh. Steal one. Fly there on a big grey goose. Take the bus, but stay away from my car.’
‘Hannah!’
‘Kay, crap, hold on,’ your pretty child exclaimeth, coming out in nattered jammies.
‘Where are you going,’ Jule asks with some distress, one hand on Hannah’s shoulder.
‘Utah,’ you say, and jerk your precious child away from Julianna, and drag her out into the night. You remove your nightrobe and hop into the jeans on the lawn, breasts jouncing, child bouncing on your arm. ‘I don’t know how,’ you call into the night, ‘but that catkilling deadman is in Utah.’
‘Fuck,’ Jule says, once you’re gone. ‘Fucking stupid fucking cat.’
Giant Jack only hits me the once. Doesn’t even hit me in the face. I get up, when I can, and try to be grateful. All the ribs on the right side of my body are bruised, if not cracked, if not broken. I cough for a while, and that hurts, and I expect blood, to validate me, but none comes up.
‘Damn, nigga, that hurt?’
‘I’m not black,’ I wheeze, ‘and neither are you, Jack.’ Still no blood. I feel cheated.
‘I’m the blackest motherfucker in the valley,’ Jack says, kneeling down.
“Salt Lake City,’ I cough, ‘that may be true.’
‘Funny motherfucker, El. Always.’
‘Funny looking,’ a voice says from over there.
‘Man,’ I say, pulling at my silly hair, ‘someone give me a shave,’ and shink, there it is, that pearlhandled hookercutter, four inches of carbon steel ohGodno against my throat. Giant Jack’s hair falls over me like a willow sheet, soft and black and long enough to settle to the floor.
‘That what you want, Cockshot?’ He is close, and his mouth is big enough to fit my fists into. Great square teeth like dice.
‘No,’ I say, carefully. Jack folds his straight razor up and twists his hair around it into a knot, collar level. ‘You going to kill me?’
‘Maybe,’ Jack says. ‘You gonna climb for me?’
‘Jack,’ I say as evenly as I can, ‘you just broke all my ribs.’
‘Figure you can climb better crippled than dead.’
‘Fair enough.’
He’s there again, and picks me up roughly, drops me seated onto a linoleum table. ‘Nah, not fair, El. Three grand is fair.’
‘Ouch, Jesus, Jack. No interest?’
‘Cut this nigga, Jack,’ the voice calls out from over there. I guess it’s the driver of the Escalade. ‘Clownin on you.’
‘Clown he may be,’ Jack booms, his massive arm suddenly around me. ‘But El here, he’s a regular billygoat. Used’ta leap off buildings for me, huh, Cockshot? Zip the computer and flip, gone into the night.’
‘Like Batman,’ the voice says. ‘The fuck you want computers for?’
‘Lee,’ Jack says, quiet now, ‘you got any idea what some bishop motherfucker with the same urges as everyone else will pay to keep you showin the dirty shit he got at the office to one’a his wives?’
‘Hmm,’ says Lee, and Jack regards me fondly.
‘This shit was his idea. We ran credit cards from hard drives, blackmailed the dick off these businessmen, shit- I even invested a few times. Got a little insider trading going.’
‘Like Martha Stewart,’ Lee says.
‘Fuck Martha Stewart,’ booms Giant Jack. ‘And fuck you, El. Why you run off on me?’
‘You know me,’ I grimace, and remove Jack’s tattooed treetrunk from my neck.
He puts it back, and squeezes. ‘Yeah, I do. That’s how I know you’re gonna climb for me, one last time.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘One last time. For what, Jack?’
‘Graven image. Man says He God, wants that graven image cut down.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ says Jack.
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’ Jack lets his arm loose, and I glare at him. Straighten, and try to breathe all the way in.
‘Jailtime, Jack.’
‘Not for me.’
‘Sell you out.’
‘Pollies have you beggin, come to that.’
‘I could just let you kill me.’
Giant Jack stares into my eyes for a while. ‘What you so cool, for, El?’ he asks, ‘What you been doing?’
‘Jack, if my girlfriend shows up, ask me that shit again. I want a haircut. Then we talk rope.’
‘Lee,’ calls Giant Jack, and something moves over there. He seems to study my face- not my eyes, the rest of the package. ‘You still on that junk, El? I can fix you up.’
‘Fuck you,’ I say, and brace for him to hit me again.
‘Right,’ the Poly-Ute behemoth grunts. ‘Fuck me.’ He repeats it as he walks off, swaying like an aircraft carrier, the only man I know that would threaten to cut my throat and then turn his back on me. ‘Fuck me,’ he laughs, and goes out of the light, and a door shuts over there.
You’re burning up desert, dragging your toes through redred dust and blowing at a thousand miles an hour, killing little mammals with your dry pink toenails cause they can’t even hear you coming, your gifted child clutching to the mandala your ribcage makes, teeth bared to your velocity, howling in her child’s delight.
Yeah, the good cat’s gone, the one you’d throw me out of bed for if I kicked it in my sleep, that stupid cat. I wonder if you’ll burn this hot, stay flamed through all the dry lands till you hit this false oasis and the heinous pact I’ve made. I wonder if He’ll stop you, God, and wonder if He can.
Come kill me, love, and save this halfbreed thug the trouble.
Your wondrous child, she bounces like a horseman in the stirrup, thumping against your back as you drift to me at awesome speeds, bad physics at your shredding mercy.
Come kill me, love.
REI is an ugly place, if only because you can’t afford what others are buying. They have a little bouldered terrain bridge for you to try out your onepiece Vasques on. God shows up at the display cases, and points out the roped dolmen that looms over the registers.
‘Ever climbed that?’ He asks.
‘Oh, fuck off. You twofaced drunk.’
‘Too much for you, huh? I mean, come on, look at it.’
‘I’ve climbed every line in the Rockies.’ I feel furious at the climbing wall, suddenly.
‘Except one.’
‘Now this is bullshit.’ Lee is nearby, confused by overpriced architectural trinkets, one hand inside his coat. ‘This is bullshit, and I’m gonna get arrested.’
‘Perhaps,’ God says. He spreads his hands prettily. ‘At least you’re not dead.’
‘But this?’
‘Once you’re in you can’t get out,’ He provides.
‘You’re Italian. God’s a Guido... preserve me.’
‘Nah. They kept on with their Hellenic cow and fuckfest garbage for centuries. Fair weather fans. I decide not to ask about the Pope, Vatican City, etc. Then, ‘I’m interested, about the climbing. I think I’ll go up with you.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Oh,’ He sighs, ‘yeah.’
The attendant sees you coming over the great dinosaur graveyards, sees that you’re a spark, a plume, a twister, freight-train, woman, faster than a plane could close the distance, screech!
You’re stopped, not panting, still leaning forward slightly, sixty five degrees to the hot flat ground, and Hannah loops and swings down from your shape and runs toward the station, hands pressed tight between her legs.
‘Rest-ta-rooms are for paying customers,’ the attendant whispers, and brings the bottle of Walker up and pugs at it for a second. You straighten up and sag. Your pupils are knocking about.
‘Roy, I’m not a customer,’ you tell him. ‘I’m a goddamn miracle.’
‘Rest-ta-rooms,’ Roy says, ‘are for paying miracles.’
You laugh, and laugh some more, and Roy just pugs that blended Scotch, until he don’t care about your mode of travel. ‘Buy a newspaper,’ he says.
‘No,’ you say.
‘Buy some gum,’ he says.
‘No.’
‘Souvenir trucker hat.’
‘Fuck no.’
‘Then get yer girl out the rest-ta-room, miracle.’
‘Too late.’ You look at him for a moment, and he throws his empty prism of glass to the red dirt and blacktop. ‘Alright,’ you say to Roy, and go inside the bright bright station, the blow of stars thinning as you enter its flourescent cave. Roy follows, hopskip, swerving.
You walk up to his counter and you slip a pack of Luckies from the overhead behind it, and you spin the little card console on its metal clamp and punch its painted buttons. You palm a lighter and tear the Navycut Strikes open with your teeth, not packing, and extract a loose cylinder with pinstripes and circlestamp in muted black, light it up.
‘No smokin inside,’ Roy says. You breathe a tankful of unfiltered smoke and cough five times, as if your throat will come out.
‘Pack of smokes,’ you say.
‘Five dollars,’ says Roy, and this is too much, but fuck it.
‘Lighter.’
‘Buck seventy-five.’
‘Gallon of gas.’
‘Three twenty-five.’ You show your teeth to him around the Lucky, and he coughs. ‘Two ninety-seven-point-nine.’
You punch the painted buttons. ‘Call it ten, Roy?’ He shrugs, and you grow a hoary fingernail out into a blade, and leering, run it through the cardslot on the console. Ding... approved. Roy swallows through his faded eyes, and follows you out into the night.
You choose pump two of four, and hit the super premium, unleaded, lift the holster-thing and raise the fuelcock to your mouth. And squeeze the handle, stare at Roy and guzzle warbought gas until the fuelcock clicks,
And drizzling, stops. You wipe your putrid lips and belch and laugh and laugh and laugh like fucking Christmas, and Roy wanders off into the dark, rejected from this world. You flex your gut and all the lights there fail, and night returns to Nowhere, Utah. The stars pile in and gleeful, multiply, until the Milky Way’s a rancid bar of light, jagged through it all, and you feel small, and sick, and want to die.
Come kill me, love, I whisper in your mind,
And you remember.
Your pretty child comes from the station, stops and looks straight up at it all, and windmills her arms. Falls onto her pajama-ed bum. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Dang... did you do that?’
‘Sure, badger.’ You sigh. ‘Holywrinkle, loveymunchkin. Sure, I made the stars in the motherfucking sky, petunia. Sweetypumpkin, sparrowbear. Behold, my dumpling baby dear,’ and you sob once, ‘your momma’s everlasting light!’
Hannah solemnly comes and climbs your knee, your thigh, your hip, and attaches her limbs around your guts and shoulders.
‘Hey,’ your precious child exclaimeth, ‘you smell like gas.’ She breathes deeply of your hair and jowls.You tear into the desert like a fever after me.
The woman from the flophouse walks God to the Hotel Monaco. Bambara, but we are drunk instead of rich. Well, I am drunk. Fuck it. I’m climbing the Temple with God. ‘Does it bother you they call it their Temple?’ I say, and throw my beer bottle at them. God catches it,but she falls down anyway. ‘How’d you find her?’
‘The note I left you,’ God says, and pockets the beer bottle. ‘Sober up.’
Fuck, I’m sober.
I open my last beer. ‘Don’t,’ I warn him, and pound it.
‘Asshole,’ the prostitute says, gaining her feet in a series of miniskirt and stocking adjustments.
‘Go on,’ God says to her.
‘Motherfucker, you owe me two hundred dollars.’
‘Money up front,’ I exclaim around the suds of my Lev.
‘Go on,’ He insists.
‘Not without my cash, asshole!’
‘You,’ He whispers, ‘you still pretend you’re caring for your two children for the Welfare- one black, one white, both fucked and abandoned under strange names in Juno, Alaska.’ She squeals, and He advances. ‘When you were twelve you put your finger in your bellybutton and tasted what your neighbor’d done, all thick and spunk and burning up your middle. You dream at night that you’re Snow White, and waiting for that hunk-a’s kiss and then the dwarves they come and plug your every hole and rape you and you feel like you’ve come home, Amanda. Home.’
‘My name,’ she shrieks, ‘is Jazzy!’ She runs into the night.
‘You’re a dick,’ I say to God. He shrugs.
‘Maybe it’ll scare some religion into her. I mean, come on.’ I wait for it. ‘She changed her name to Jazzy.’
‘Gospel,’ I say.
‘Let’s go,’ He says, and takes my last beer bottle from me and pockets it too, and we walk north up Main Street. ‘Is it climbable?’
‘Climbable? Let me tell you, I climbed the Wells Fargo in this rotten city. I climbed the capitol, and I put a pumpkin on the city building for Halloween. They had to lower a firefighter from a helicopter to get it off.’
‘So?’
‘So of course its climbable. That’s not the problem.’
‘What’s the problem, El?’
‘The problem is,’ I sigh, and wish I was still drunk, ‘it’s the Temple.’
‘Right,’ God says. ‘Right. Got a hacksaw?’
‘Is it solid gold? Or plated?’
‘Who the fuck knows?’
‘Oh come on,’ I say.
‘Do you know?’
‘I’ve got a hacksaw and three blades,’ I tell Him. We hit one-hundred south.
‘What? Why didn’t you just bring three hacksaws?’
‘I don’t even know if you’ll make it over the wall,’ I snap. ‘You sold me out to Giant Jack.’
‘I brought you back to life.’
‘You wrote Cockshot on my forehead!’
‘El, I am-’
‘You let 9-11 happen! The Dresden firebombing, Armenian genocide, aboriginal cleansing and Paris Hilton got a fucking record deal! Six million Jews, two million gays and gypsies and painters, you let Joseph Smith sit and forge his science fiction from behind a sheet inside his kitchen and now you’re pissed they own the South-Pacific?’ We were past the malls, and there she was, that honkie Mecca, discreet and clean and tightly built and ringed by ugly concrete structures.
I waved my arm madly at it, at Temple Square. ‘You let it happen!’
‘Yeah,’ God said, and clinked my beer bottles together in his jacket pocket. ‘Sorry about that. You ready?’ I saw he was harnessed up. I removed my overcoat and I was harnessed up as well. I doublechecked my knots and didn’t check shit on God (may He devour Himself), stepped into the street and pulled Lee’s gun from the shoulder-holster and screwed the silencer on and shot out every light there on the corner.
Fuck a camera.
I scrambled up the wall and lipped it, pulling onto belly, then my thighs. The busted ribs screeched, and I was curled on top the Temple wall when God achieved my perch, and learning how to breathe in waves of pain. ‘Come on,’ God says, ‘I mean, really, Jesus.’ He lands on the soft, soft grass. I follow.
I consider shooting him fourteen times, the number of bullets I have left in my clip, and just shoot lights instead. We scramble up, and down, and lay our hands onto the holy masonry.
Up. The rope and spreader pinion caribbeaner trust in tiny feats of engineering all come out from my pack, Jack’s bill, and God just grins and he’s grown claws, big thick fuckers, and his sneakers lay abandoned ‘gainst the building’s cornered base, and claws have grown out of his socks.
Up. I holster the gun and throw the silencer beyond the fence and sploop!
It burrows deep, reflecting-pool accepting what its done with just a shockwave, gone in forty seconds. Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe that’s what brought the helicopter, fuck, who knows, they saw the waves in the reflecting-pool.
I think they have the building wired for weight.
God brought the helicopter down with my two empty bottles of Green-label Lev lager. He hucked them at the helicopter, and the thunderous wonder jerked, and tanked, and nosed, and dove.
Some people say ‘dived’, nowadays.
The helicopter dove and joined its little cousin the silencer, to sink into reflecting-pool, whupwhupkeeeraousch!
Plangtrankhtkerpow!
Ssizzssssssswhupwhuuuphwhuuuuuuhhhh… Indescribable, really.
You, my love, you, you would have appreciated the death of that machine. You know all about it.
The second bottle, I suppose, struck the rotor. Or went through the hurricane-shield and brained the pilot. But it was Old Testament again in Zion, folks, it was true-ly brimstone when that tilted carp of heated metal hit the reflecting-pool.
I was kind of pissed that there was no explosion.
Then someone is firing a rifle, and I keep climbing. God’s gained like twenty feet on me, and we’re centering on the fucker now, and it’s hard climbing, spire-humping, worming our way up a single stab into the Godless night.
Except there He is, calm as anything. ‘Were my fingerprints on those bottles?’ I shout at Him, at his grin and His unHoly claws.
‘Indubitably,’ He shouts back. A bullet takes him high in the shoulder and He clucks, and collapses onto his calves. My own ribs are singing counterpoint with choirs of live-skinned cats and winning, but it’s all easier somehow, this incredible broke-rib pain so I can’t feel my torn and straining fingertips. God straightens, and turns, and exhales locusts in a cloud toward the square below.
They storm, and press, and spread and we’re almost to him now, that lovely hornblowing behemoth, that angel over NewWorldJesus. He’s really much bigger than I’ve imagined, catching glimpses of his shape over the sunset, the Avenues against my back. He’s near as big as I, or God, I wonder, and free the hacksaw from my climbing pack.
The Catholic Church sounds Big Ben’s four a.m. and here come po-lice cars like bugs for meat, arrayed in tens on every street, their flat blue-red-lights made to pass for ski-racks at high speeds, and for the first time I hyperventilate a little bit, and then I set my saw and skkrrr-push!
It’s begun.
I heard a story, once.
Moroni the trumpet blower on his pinnacle was filthy. No ugly concrete structures, then. It was railroad-world, and the Mormons had their roots set into the unforgiving desert soil. When they came to Temple, their announcing angel didn’t gleam. He grubbed, and sucked the light. So word was put out for a churchbell-scaler, for a tower-gleaner, and the pioneers sent queries to the faroff world. Someone had to scrub their golden calf.
No son of Joseph had a head for heights, I guess.
This man came from Neuva York, a Rockefeller rope-swinger, a true arachnid new-wave freak, the urban version of those Swiss, already hanging from El Capitan in Yellowstone. He took the hardluck railway to the heart of Salt Lake City, and he had a meal, and slept.
He woke, and climbed the temple like a peak to see what he could see.
When he’d come down he saw the Prophet, and rubbed his sweaty brow, and said a price that shocked the very times. The Saint, who- prone to Revelations- hadn’t had a shock in years, asked why he quoted sums so astronomical.
The scaffold-devil, bridge-defier leered, and leaned his little wiry self across the Saint’s desk. ‘That sonuvabitch is dirtier than you can imagine,’ he said, and the Prophet cut him a check.
Another helicopter has arrived.
‘That sonuvabitch is dirtier than you can imagine,’ God yells over the helicopter’s bombast, and coughs, and scoops a lonely locust from his cheek. He flicks it at the ghettobird and down it goes, in-spiral, apocalyptic, destructo- boom!
I get my explosion, this time, and some of the SWAT team gets theirs.
‘Fuck,’ I whisper.
I’ve wrench the hacksaw too much, and my first blade warps and snaps. Moroni’s maybe one-third un-footed. I retrieve a new blade and manage to winch it onto the saw-frame. Skkrrr-push!
‘Hurry it up,’ God growls. Rifle shots sound every few seconds, and He is swatting bullets, His locusts swooping and diving and bursting where they succeed. ‘I mean, come on,’ He says.
The second blade snaps- I am pushing too hard. I dig the last two out and fumble,
and they flitter down, erect lengths of killribbon over Zion.
‘Get the knife,’ says God. I stare at him.
’The knife?’
He sighs, and then turns mean. ‘You fuck, you sold out Daniel Blumenfeld at ten, and told your mom the fire was his idea, and you stuffed the still-hot paper under shelves down in the cellar. You couldn’t fuck your girlfriends all through high school cause that man from church tried to sodomize you and you knew that meant you were a dirty fag.’
‘Stop,’ I say, weakly. What knife?
‘What knife? You broke into a home and took more weed than you could put your dick in, later saw the kid who told you where dad hid it, heard his father tell you how he’d stolen it.’
‘The motherfucker had an AK under his bed!’
‘That rich fuck, in his hardwood room? He was your friend! Get the knife!’
‘What knife?’ I scream, and hammer at Moroni’s ankles with my fists. Gold-plated. Definitely only gold-plated.
God holds his claws up to me, and they are fingers. ‘You dream that you’re that beautiful child’s father, and that you can take her away, and get a job with a tie, and serve her meals at night and tuck her in and call her babykins, pumpkinbreath, bunnybear, fuzzbutton, honeywraith.’
‘Stop!’
‘The knife, El!’
I scream and dig my fingers through my broken ribs, that zip-zip- xylophone of Giant Jack-pain, and close my fingers on its hilt. The carving knife, the prodigal.
The El-Slayer, the Ass-Mangler.
I wrench it from my heaving armpit and draw it ‘lectric cross the statue’s base, and down Moroni goes, and flips, and falls, and crashes through the peaked roof below.
‘Well, I mean, Jesus,’ God says. ‘Finally. I mean, come on,’ and disappears.
I clip in hard and kick out over everything, rope running through my hands- it’s like regret, like guilt, like lover’s hair- forty feet down. Knee flexor, impact chest in-tensor, ribs don’t hurt, the knife has vanished with its ribcage-hider, huck!
I’m off and forty feet further toward the ground.
And like Wile E. I feel you storming, first-time Roadrunner overcoming;
Tearing like a blade from south for me, something precious cradled o’er your forward-driving pompadour. Hannah like a crab on sickness clutching at your soul-burnt torso, gorgeous breasts straining at her banded arms, your hooded sweatshirt. As my feet hit the ground two officers railroad me, spin me on my expensive rope and turn me widdershins against the wind.
And you catch me, love, fuck knows how you came through that wall, but I am terrified and you are beautiful, and I wish I could stop seeing your thighs flapping like brisket beneath your nightrobe, dust still falling gently on the Frigidaire.
Hannah unclamps and lands in the softsoft grass and draws a mighty breath.
‘Baby,’ I gasp, flummoxed by love and tackle.
‘You killed my cat,’ you hiss. I dangle in your forearms, a doll. Hannah is turning bright red.
‘I hated that cat,’ I say before I can stop myself. You knock a wall of cops up off their feet and spread them loose against their holy site, and I hiccup: once, twice. Hannah is purple.
‘You punched me,’ you howl, and you are quite radiant, now, ‘in the fucking neck!’
Hannah blue, ‘Crazy, stupid,’ I whisper, hopeless.
Hannah really blue, and you toss me to the ground and raise your arms over me like the Ark of the Covenant, like the flood is coming, the rapture, whoosh!
I uncover from my huddle and you are gone, a greasy pair of Keds and a cloud of smoke overhead that smells like you, like you after you swim in the river, like you when dawn draws out your sweat, like the inside of your sweaters, your gloves, your pockets when it rains.
Your pretty child steps toward me, and pulls me to my feet.
‘El,’ she whispers, ‘I’m sorry.’
I begin to cry, and she hushes me, and jogs me toward the wall. ‘Come on, now,’ she soothes. ‘I mean, really, Jesus, El, come on.’ I scramble up the wall, bereft, and your glorious child makes a chuffing sound with her cheeks below. ‘Why,’ she asks, ‘did you shave your head?’
