The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (17 page)

After Seese had been at the ranch for a while, she was less afraid of Ferro and Paulie. They both behaved as if she were invisible, and she was a little horrified when she realized the invisibility was almost identical to the nonbeing that Beaufrey and Serlo had assigned to her while she had been with David.

•   •   •

Seese tried thinking of it as it was or as Lecha
said
it was: pain from the cancer required these injections. Seese knew too much about the street life to be fooled by the bottles of Percodan with a legitimate doctor’s name on them. Seese never asked any questions about the cancer because she thought sooner or later Lecha would mention a specific location or a past surgery. But all Lecha could talk about now was the work ahead of them and how when the work was properly completed Seese would have the answers she wanted.

Seese closed the door to her bedroom and closed the door to the bathroom she shared with Lecha. It had been a long time since she had performed everyday, ordinary routines.

BEAUFREY TALKED LOUDLY about the best doctor he knew. Neat, quick job and totally painless because if you specify, the doc always comes through—the very best of the painless—morphine. “You’d lap it up! You’d like it just fine!” Beaufrey said suddenly, his hot breath in her face. The stink of Beaufrey’s breath and his words had felt like a fist in her stomach, and Seese knew she would puke. She felt cold sweat break out across the bridge of her nose and under her arms.

Beaufrey wants Seese to have another abortion. “Morphine will be sooooo goooood to you!”

“I throw up,” Seese told him.

“Morning sickness,” Beaufrey had said, building a case against the pregnancy.

“No. I mean
morphine
makes me puke.” Seese had held her ground. Even before her belly had bulged out, Seese had been on different footing with Beaufrey. David wanted a child. Seese saw Beaufrey’s pale blue eyes dilate black with anger. Beaufrey turned away from Seese and shook the ice in his scotch. “All the dope and booze will kill it anyway.” Beaufrey never said “baby” or “child.” Beaufrey was uncomfortable and kept looking at David, as if to calculate how important a child was for David.

After Seese had refused all mention of abortion, Beaufrey had become obsessed with the child. Because of course it was
David’s
child. After Seese had seen a doctor, Beaufrey had suddenly decided to acknowledge her existence. He began to ask her questions about the pregnancy. Beaufrey talked about fetuses and fetal development. Researchers had done a great many more experiments on fetuses alive in the womb
and had filmed the experiments. Beaufrey was in partnership with a rare-book seller in Buenos Aires with a complete line of dissection films and videotapes for sale.

Beaufrey said where abortion had been legalized, the films of the fetal dissections and experiments seemed to lose their peculiar fascination for “collectors.” The biggest customers for footage of fetuses was the antiabortionist lobby, which paid top dollar for the footage of the tortured tiny babies. Beaufrey watched the creatures grimace and twist away from the long needle probes and curette’s sharp spoon. Million-dollar footage. He liked to watch it again and again to see the faces of the lobbyists’ assistants. Lush, doe-eyed things that hadn’t yet had their damp, pink rims and swollen, purple petals violated by stainless-steel rods and warty pricks. Beaufrey only laughed because he could imagine himself as a fetus, and he knew what they should have done with him swimming hopelessly in the silence of the deep, warm ocean. His mother had told him she tried to abort herself. She had never let it happen again after she had him.

Beaufrey had started by hating his mother; hating the rest of them was easy. Although Beaufrey ignored women, he enjoyed conversation that upset or degraded them. He said he liked to imagine the fetus struggling hopelessly in slow motion as suddenly all the pink horizons folded in on him. Films of the late abortions were far more popular than those of early embryo stages. The forceps appeared as a giant dragon head opening and closing in search of a morsel. By the tiny light of the microcamera, the uterine interior resembled a vast ballroom that had been draped all around in glossy-red silks and velvets of burgundy and lilac. The best operators got it all in one piece by finding the skull and crushing it. Beaufrey had viewed hundreds of hours of film searching for atypical or pathological abortions because the collectors who bought films of abortions and surgeries preferred blood and mess. There was a steady, lucrative demand for films of sex-change operations, though most interest had been in males becoming females. For videotapes of sodomy rapes and strangulations, teenage “actors” from a local male-escort service had “acted” the victims’ roles.

Beaufrey wondered if while they were beating their meat, the “connoisseurs” and the “collectors” ever noticed something lacking, some animal chemistry missing. Could they sense what had only been theatrical devices—from the fake blood to slices of plastic skin and flesh? The first few times they might write off this diminishment of pleasure to stress or getting over a cold. But later would they again begin to feel
as if something had been short-circuited? Beaufrey liked to think so. He liked to think how the “collector” would begin to fret over his limp cock, never suspecting the movie scenes had not been the real thing. Beaufrey spent hours daydreaming about the torture of leaving enough of the man or the woman that they still had the cravings and the urges; but fix them so they can never get off again no matter what they do. Beaufrey had known a number of punks who got their balls chopped. The doctors make implants that released male hormone—more testosterone than any of them had—ever got before from their own scrawny testicles.

Beaufrey disliked films of women’s sex changes; there was no pleasure in seeing how fast doctors gave a woman a cock and balls. Women needed brain transplants before they’d ever be “men,” but the ignorant public saw a movie like that and believed the woman suddenly “became” a man.

Beaufrey preferred to specialize in the surgical fantasy movies, but those customers generally had other kinks, and Beaufrey was there ‘’ to please,” he used to tell them, with a smile.

The real weirdos became even more obsessed with the “real thing”—they claimed they could detect fakes—an utter lie since Beaufrey had yet to sell an actual “snuff” film. Beaufrey had got a good laugh out of the “real thing” freaks who had paid him hundreds and even thousands of dollars. The queers couldn’t get enough of those flicks of the steel scalpel skating down the slope of the penis tip, a scarlet trail spreading behind it. Asian faces under white surgical masks and caps glisten with sweat as the penis is peeled like a banana and is turned inside out like a surgical glove, so that the penis skin becomes the lining of the artificial vagina. A companion sequence in which a woman got implants of balls and a dildo sewn inside to folds of specifically prepared skin had been a distribution failure, which had convinced Beaufrey he knew far more about the market than his Argentine business partners. The demand for films of ritual circumcisions of six-year-old virgins had doubled itself every year. There were waiting lists of creeps who got weak at the mention of hairless twats and tight little buds. Massaged and teased into its first and also its last erection, the little girl’s clitoris in close-up looked like a miniature penis. It was a great relief to see the dark, thick fingers of the operator pressing the wet, quivering organ into full extension for the blade of the razor. The offending organ was removed and the wound was washed, then packed in gauze and bandages that were changed repeatedly as they became soaked with blood.

BEAUFREY HAD AWAKENED HER. Seese had slept all night outside on a chaise lounge. A wind had come up. The sky was overcast with storm clouds. The skin on her upper thighs had goose bumps. She sat up on the chaise lounge next to the pool and rubbed her legs and arms, without looking up. Seese asked where everyone was. Beaufrey had given a strange little laugh. The hairs on her thighs and the top of her head prickled; she felt icy drops of sweat down her back. Beaufrey had not bothered to warn her sheriff’s deputies and the coroner were completing their reports inside. Seese started to look for another towel or robe to cover the bikini. But Beaufrey had already pushed her firmly through the sliding glass door into the living room. The deputies stared at her and for an instant Seese thought this had to be one of those dreams where everyone else is wearing clothing, but you are naked. But in her dreams she was the only one who had noticed her nudity. This was crazy: she was wearing a bathing suit by a pool but still they were staring at her. The faces of the deputies made it clear the blame had been pinned on Seese. She tried to remember everything they’d done earlier that day. All the places she and Eric had piloted the “Big Blue Bedroom” car. Seese tried to remember if there had been any accidents. “What?” She repeated the word, looking from face to face until finally she came to David, who refused to look at her or answer; he pretended to read the statement the deputies had asked him to sign.

She did not feel drunk or high, but she was shivering and sweating. She pushed past Beaufrey and went into the hall bathroom. Seese wrapped herself in a terry cloth robe she pulled out of the laundry closet. The robe smelled sour. Seese sat on the edge of the big sunken tub and stared out the window at the swimming pool. No one stopped her when she went outside again and dived in the pool.

She wasn’t feeling anything. She wasn’t feeling that Eric was dead. She was feeling that he had gone back to Lubbock to visit his mother. She was feeling that this was what was true. It had to feel true or it wasn’t; even if another part of her consciousness told her she had heard
the doorbell and then voices. Eric was dead. She knew it was a fact. But what was a fact? Eric was gone, but did that mean he was dead? Eric had gone to Texas for two weeks when his grandmother died. The other voice persisted. “Dead” meant he wasn’t coming back in two weeks. Seese lay on her back and floated in the pool with her eyes closed until the police and the others had gone. She still didn’t feel anything. The cocaine had dried out her mouth. Her tongue felt thick enough to choke her. She tried to catch her upper lip between her teeth, but teeth and lips seemed a long, cool distance from her throat. The first place David had ever taken her was the gallery where his photographs had just been hung. She had met Eric there. He knew everything and she knew nothing. But Eric had liked her, and in the weeks when she had gradually figured out that Eric and David had been lovers, she felt calm because she liked Eric so much. David never showed any particular affection for her or for Eric. With both of them he acted the same. He had always been offhand and aloof with her. Now she saw him do the same to Eric.