Penny Dreadful (14 page)

It’s unstable, he said.

Eve rolled her eyes. But she stepped around it anyway, then stopped. The carpet did look strange, fuzzy and wavering. She bent to touch it and Christian pulled her away.

Don’t, he said. It could be a vortex.

Are you serious?

He didn’t answer, but she knew he was disgusted with her. He always treated her like a dim-witted child when it came to the game of tongues. He had no patience for what he called her failure to see what was real. Eve rubbed her eyes, wondered if she was dreaming. This didn’t seem possible, logical. But at the same time, she didn’t find it so alarming and she felt herself glowing, detaching. She felt like Goo.

Oh, no.

Yes, she said. Her skin was tight and cold.

She was on the verge of becoming Goo, without trying. Horrible and sweet at the same time. Because she loved herself as Goo, really. She forgot that sometimes. Mingus was in the kitchen, pacing back and forth like a nervous uncle. He was waiting for somebody to give birth. He looked at her, briefly. He sniffed her but said nothing. Eve realized from a vague distance that Mingus was reluctant to stand in one place for too long. And it looked like he was keeping his distance from Christian, too. She thought of the dried blood she had found in his hair.

In the living room, Christian pointed to the wall behind her velvet sofa. It looked like gray fog, a curtain of mist. Christian took a coin from his pocket and tossed it at the wall. The coin vanished.

Fleurs du mal, said Christian. We have to get out of here.

Eve stared at the wall, thinking that she would certainly have to move the sofa. That wall wasn’t going to keep the rain out, was it?

What? she said.

We want you to get dressed, he said. Quickly. And bring whatever you can carry. We won’t be coming back here.

But I have a six-month lease on this place. If I disappear, I lose my deposit.

A small brown bird flew through the wall from the other side and crashed to the floor. It flopped there, dazed. It appeared to be a starling. Christian looked at the bird, then at Eve. He laughed out loud, almost howling. He picked up the bird and snapped its neck.

Believe me, he said. You have already lost your deposit.

Griffin wanted to walk and I really didn’t mind. My head was a mess. My head was dusty, full of fuzz and cat hair. I could use the fresh air, no question. I needed a few minutes before I had to sit at a table with my face three feet from Griffin’s and his unbending smile.

And I suddenly felt like talking.

Maybe the coke had loosened my wheels, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I told Griffin most of what had happened to me in Texas. I told him all about Jude and how she made me feel like a slug on a razor blade. I told him about the morphine, the lost kidney. I told him about Horatio and how I killed him with a kiss. I told him too much, maybe Griffin didn’t say anything, but he did laugh inappropriately a few times.

Griffin took me to a place called Rob Roy’s. A dark, silent underground grotto where the waiters were stout, elderly black men who wore bow ties and never smiled. They didn’t offer you a menu. And you were clearly a freak if you ordered anything but whiskey and a porterhouse steak. There were no women in the joint, none. A lot of crusty old men, though. They shoveled the bloody meat into their holes like they had never heard of heart disease: they were lawyers, judges, and newspaper writers, and a few drowsy cops.

What year is this? I said.

Griffin looked around, beaming. Nice, isn’t it. It’s 1955. Hitler is dead and the economy is a house on fire. My dad is sitting over there with Judge Waters, drunk as a fucking pig.

It’s freaking me out.

Relax, said Griffin. Drink your martini. Or have another one. I’m buying.

Why are you being so friendly?

Griffin rubbed his naked head, his helmet. He shrugged. The walls of Rob Roy’s were dark red and in that burgundy suit he nearly melted into the background. I could only see his eyes and teeth. The soft glow of his skull.

I sank back into the flexible haze of my own head. Griffin and I had gone to the same college, a shitty state school in Memphis. I didn’t know him then, not really. But I had heard the stories. Griffin had this little girlfriend, a high school dropout. She was seventeen and after she moved out of her mother’s house, Griffin sneaked her into his dorm like she was an illegal pet. He got her pregnant and then went homicidal because she didn’t want to have a baby. Meanwhile, the girl did not have such a good reputation. She was a kleptomaniac, she was suicidal. She was white trash, she would give you a blow job if you bought her a milkshake. And she was illiterate. But this was a lot of bullshit. I met her only once and had liked her right away. The girl was sweet and tough, with the voice of a dead jazz singer. She wanted to be a photographer. Her name was Lisa and she was maybe a little too infatuated with Emily Dickinson, but I could forgive that. She was seventeen, right. Then she had a miscarriage and Griffin lost his mind. He knew she had gotten an abortion, he knew it. And so one night he tried to set her on fire, while she slept. Griffin did six months in jail and because he was only nineteen and his daddy was a powerful man in Memphis, his records were sealed. Lisa changed her name and got a job, an apartment. Then Griffin came out of the county farm on good behavior and started hanging around abortion clinics. He started following girls home. And on a rainy day in late April, he knocked on Lisa’s door. He was smiling the same punishing smile. He wanted to give her something, he said. He offered her a bloody pillowcase that contained the head of a murdered prostitute. The prostitute, he claimed, was a killer of babies. But Lisa never blinked. She was expecting him, she said. Lisa surprised him, she did. She shocked the hell out of him. Lisa produced a gun and shot him and suddenly Griffin wasn’t smiling anymore. There was a hole in his arm the size of a half dollar. Later it was discovered that the pillowcase contained the head of a dressmaker’s dummy. Griffin didn’t press charges and the case was dropped.

And when I met him ten years later, Griffin was a slick young lawyer in Denver, working in the DA’s office. He was arrogant, seductive, ruthless. He was a very good lawyer. I knew he might be a psychopath but what the fuck, right. I struck up a conversation with him anyway. A dark November morning. We were sitting on the courthouse steps, maybe ten feet apart. It was bitterly cold, unpleasantly cold. It was starting to snow. I had come outside to smoke, to get away from the press and the bureau chief and my own lawyer and everything else. Griffin was sitting cross-legged, with an expensive and famously ugly Italian leather coat wrapped around him. He was smoking a cigar. I glanced at his face and saw that he was a little hung over. Maybe a touch of the flu. Anyway, he looked like shit and I didn’t feel much better. I had been testifying on a case that involved cops and the secret assassination of a local heroin king who had pretty much deserved to die, and the trial was dragging along like it would never end. Griffin was working an unrelated case, something to do with animal torture. It was boring him to death.

I said to him, didn’t you go to school in Memphis?

Griffin had smiled. The smile that made me feel queasy. Like I just stepped on something dead, a bird or mouse bloated from the rain and now I couldn’t get its guts off my shoe. But I went out drinking with him that night, and Griffin soon became something for me that every cop needs. Griffin became my ally, my confessor.

Wake the fuck up, said Griffin. Your food is getting cold.

The waiter had come and gone. I looked down. Before me was a wide, metal plate that held the biggest, ugliest lump of meat I had ever seen. Beside it was a deformed brown thing that appeared to be oozing sour cream. I slowly comprehended that this was a baked potato.

Do you have a girlfriend? said Griffin.

What?

Other than the organ thief, I mean.

I ignored him. I poked and prodded at the steak. It was not so bloody at all. In fact, it looked burned.

Your wife is dead, he said. Over a year now.

That’s right.

What’s your story? said Griffin.

No. I don’t have a girlfriend.

Good. Very good.

Why? I said. Why is that good?

Griffin didn’t answer. He ripped into his steak, barely looking up for the next five minutes. I stole another glance at my place and was positive that I couldn’t eat this piece of meat. My teeth felt fragile, just looking at it. I wondered about Eve. She certainly was not my girlfriend but then I wasn’t sure what she was. Whenever I was near her, I felt like I should protect her but such a notion would only make her laugh. She was much more likely to save me, to catch me when I next fall at her feet.

Eve had this dark energy around her, swirling but not quite visible. The ring and shadow of myth. Her voice was ageless. Eve was delicate, childlike. I easily imagined she could be sexy, brutal.

She had the bottomless eyes of someone at war.

Now where the fuck was my brain taking me. I was slipping down the ugly slope of bad poetry. I must be a little dreamy from that funny drink, the Pale.

Because, said Griffin. If you had a girlfriend, you would lose her before tomorrow comes.

How, exactly?

I wonder. Do you believe in ghosts? said Griffin.

What do you mean, like Casper the friendly?

Griffin delicately wiped a drop of reddish grease from his lip.

No, he said. I’m talking about the underworld, the walking dead.

Yeah, well. I see the walking dead every time I look out the window.

Griffin chewed briefly, staring at me. Listen, he said. You motherfucker. I’m not talking about urban despair. I’m serious.

Okay. Have you recently seen a ghost?

No, not exactly. But I have seen things that you won’t believe.

I lit a cigarette and felt cold, thinking of the ghostly creatures I had seen in the torn-down building. Drinking tea and smoking cigarettes on a forgotten Sunday. The Lone Ranger crackling on the radio.

Ghosts. They didn’t have a care in the world.

Try me, I said.

Griffin had finished his whiskey and now he growled at the waiter for another one. He looked weirdly angry, confused. I wondered what in the hell he was up to.

Tonight, he said. I want you to come out with me tonight.

Where are we going?

To the other side of darkness.

What is that. A disco?

That’s a scream, said Griffin. You fucking kill me.

Moon:

Moon was aimless and hungry, driving around with a big emptiness in his stomach. His stomach was positively echoing. He wished he had brought along those doughnuts. But after taking out Wiley’s glass door he had been too embarrassed to go back in and ask for a take-out bag. Almost noon, now. He had sixteen dollars, right. That was enough for a big lunch. Moon had a taste for cow. He wanted a hamburger, a big one. And a milkshake or two. He still hadn’t checked in at the station and he was maybe three hours late for his tour. Hey, fuck it. That’s cool. He had a thousand sick days lined up like little yellow ducks. And there was one of his favorite burger shacks, straight ahead: Millennium Burgers. He shifted around in his seat, wishing the seat belt didn’t have to choke him. There was nowhere to park but that’s why he became a cop, right. Unlimited parking. He rolled the Taurus into a loading zone and detached the offending seat belt. He rubbed his throat briefly, then tossed his sunglasses on the dashboard. The seat belt was still tangled around one thigh and he struggled with it a moment, then clambered violently out of the front seat. The seat belt tripped him though, and he nearly landed on his face. Fucking thing wanted to kill him. Moon drifted away from the car, muttering. Then turned back. He wondered if he still had that butterfly knife in his glove box. He leaned into the car, his butt hanging into the wind for the world to admire, and dug around until he came up with a knife. It was a big motherfucker, with maybe a seven-inch blade and a shiny brass handle. The blade was tucked within the handle and the handle was supposed to come apart like wings. Hence the name. If he was slick, he could whip the thing out and the handle would flicker apart like a butterfly in flight. But he wasn’t very slick. He couldn’t even remember where he’d got the thing. A shakedown, probably. But one of his buddies might have given it to him, as a gift. Cops generally had a pretty bloodless sense of humor and any one of his pals would have hooted at the thought of him trying to flash that knife without cutting off his own nose. Anyway. He opened the knife carefully now and cut the seat belt loose at both ends. Then stabbed the blade into the driver’s seat cushion, cutting the beast from belly to throat. Yellow stuffing gaped from the wound and Moon felt better. Much better. He pocketed the butterfly and tossed the dead seat belt into a sewer grate, then proceeded to the Millennium, whistling as he walked.