Instead I make some calls, gabbing on the phone with Chef Dominic, then send a few emails, mainly to clients. But all I can think about is Miles and Lena. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of me and I jump in the Caddy and head north toward Sorenson’s. When I get there the air is hot and close and darkness is starting to fall. I bang on the door. Again. Once more. She isn’t home!
I wait outside in the Cadillac, trying to imagine what their sex would be like. Miles is strictly a ground-and-pound man, without a sensual bone in his robot body. It’s difficult to see what, if anything, a chubster like Sorenson would bring to the carnal table. I just hope he’s hammering her into some kind of ecstasy.
I take a drive, playing the Joan Jett version of “Roadrunner” full fucking blast, singing out loud. I find myself going through Little Haiti, always surprised by the English pub right in the middle of this district; watching small groups of fat ex-pat British men, who all look like chubby packet sausages in a convenience store, marching purposefully into the bar.
It’s around eleven by the time I get back to Sorenson’s. Her car is in her driveway. I park up in the Publix lot, and move toward her gate. Crouching down, I can see her through her window. She had to have been at Miles’s place. But Sorenson doesn’t have that freshly fucked look. She seems unsettled, springing outside, then back in again, as I flit behind the hibiscus bush. Her constant toing and froing between the house and her studio, for no particular reason, is starting to annoy the fuck out of me. I sneak back to the Caddy and take out the .22 air pistol from the trunk, scanning the quiet street with stealth. It’s always deserted around here, but I am aware that this still constitutes a risk.
I lurk behind a large, flowering bush at the back of the house. Then Sorenson emerges into the yard again, setting off a trip light, making me jump back behind the cover of the hibiscus. Something cracks under my feet, but Sorenson doesn’t seem to hear as she struggles with the lock on her studio door in semidarkness under the weak autosensor movement spotlight. I have the gun trained on her swollen ass, presenting an almost unmissible target in those Lycra shorts. — Darn it, she says to herself as I squeeze the trigger and hear a pffft of air, followed by an, — Owww . . . what the . . . oh my God . . . oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . and see Sorenson, mouth open, rubbing her ass, and looking around bemused and in pain.
As she hobbles back toward the house, wincing and massaging her butt, I step back and out onto the street, heading through the open gate and around the corner to my car. I get my phone and hit Sorenson’s digits.
— Lena S? Luce, my voice squashed out ghetto-high and sassy. — What the fuck goes, girlfriend?
— Oh, Lucy, I’m not good! My ass has just been stung! I don’t know what happened!
— Stung? Like by a bug?
— I think so, but I feel like I’ve been stabbed, it’s so sore!
— Where about? I mean, where did this bug sting you?
Silence. Then, — I told you, in my butt.
— Wow . . . I fight back a fucking deluge of mirth, — I’m sorry, I thought when you said your ass had just been stung, you were meaning generally, rather than literally. I’m heading up your way. I’ll come by in about a half hour.
When I head back to Lena’s, her face is still wincing in pain, as I follow her wobbling ass inside. — My backside is so sore . . .
— Too bad . . . I sympathise, as we go into the living room. — The problem with this climate is we’re full of invasive species. I doubt the bug that got you is indigenous. I saw a program on PSB last night about pythons, how they battle with alligators out in Glades—I halt in total shock as I see a treadmill, set up in front of the TV. Impressed doesn’t cover it! — Well done!
— Figured I could burn calories while I watched HBO and Showtime.
Bitch being fucking specific to rub her cable shit in my face, knowing I’m stuck on network.
— Did you do those Morning Pages?
— Yes . . . she says, and points to six sheets of paper on her desk in the office.
— Good. I pick them up.
— I have to confess, I just did them, I kind of forgot about it this morning.
I throw the papers down on the desk.
— But I found them useful!
— Why do you think they’re called
Morning
Papers? Huh? Huh! Cause you do them in the fucking morning! These are no good, I snap.
— Don’t shout at me! I’ve had a bad day!
I take it down a notch, cause I need to inspect that ass. — Okay, Lena, I’m sorry, I soften. — Now let me see this wound . . . and I soon have her lying on the couch, me hunkered over her, her pants around her ankles and her panties still on, but pulled up into her ass cleft to expose those large, white, goosebumped buttocks. Sorenson must be the whitest chick in southern Florida.
I gone branded me that bitch’s fat, lilywhite ass!
— That is a sore one, I tell her as I dab the wound with antiseptic. It’s already yellowing and smudging blue-black around the shot’s red tear. — Invasive species . . . I’d put money on it.
Fuck, yeah, I could spread those wobbly globes till I see the pubic hair from her pussy curl around those panties and . . . no, keep it professional. — I’m just gonna clean this up . . . I hear my voice low and throaty.
— Hmmm . . . Sorenson mumbles into the cushion.
After cleaning the injury and administering a Band-Aid, I get up. — All done.
We then sit side by side on the couch, watching her killer 70-inch plasma, Sorenson trying to keep her weight off the damaged buttock. The Siamese twins are back; there’s an information-based program on their disorder. It shows historical photographs of previous sufferers of the condition. The stiff-assed fag actor’s commentary: — Conjoined twins are classified by the point at which their bodies are joined. Amy and Annabel Wilks are the third most common type of conjoined twins, omphalopagus twins, comprising around 15 percent of cases. Their two bodies are fused at the lower chest. The hearts are separate but they partially share a liver, digestive system, and some other organs.
— Sharing a pussy? Sack that fucking shit!
— Those poor girls, Lena moans. — I doubt they’ll be sharing a vagina, but they will share certain nerve endings. So to all intents and purposes that means if this Stephen character is having sex with one of them, then he’s technically having sex with both. It’s sick. It’s rape!
— What?
— It’s against her consent. Amy.
— Fuck that noise! You gotta be kidding!
— Well, it is!
— I see it differently. So you’re saying it’s okay that poor Annabel can’t get fucked, by the boy she loves, cause her frigid bitch of a sister, Amy, that fucking
attachment
, won’t take one for the team?
— That’s disgusting, Lucy. What kind of a feminist are you?
— One that gets laid occasionally. You seem to be the other variety, I suggest, watching a red flush rise up Sorenson’s cheeks. — So, I’ve been dying to ask, how did it go with Miles from the gym?
— Good . . . Sorenson looks at me, picking at her nails.
— Gimme all the gory details. Did you jump his mutha-fuckin bones?
— Stop it.
— C’mon! Jesus, Lena! Did you guys fuck?
— That’s none of your business!
— That’s a “no” then?
— You can be such a bucket-mouthed sorority girl sometimes, Lucy, she pouts, then she rises and climbs on that treadmill. It’s only set at 4 mph, but at least she went without my prompting.
— Go, Lena!
And I’m trying to see past the fat, that horrible, disfiguring fat. What do I see? Those starey eyes and tight mouth in that pallid face, a crescent of moles on one side of it, like a constellation; only the tense, spooked aspect prevents it from being beautiful. That frizzy, collar-length hair, forever being swept out her eyes and tucked behind her ears.
After her “workout” we go into her studio. Again, the smell of resin and chemicals makes my eyes water. I blink them clear and I see a pile of plastic bones which she’s made in her molds, sitting on the workbench. She has the skeleton of the big alien man now hung like a puppet on a series of wires, connected to a beam on the ceiling. It looks expressive and macabre. — This is really coming on.
— I know, but there’s still something not quite right, she says, picking up a camera and taking more photos of it, to complement the ones she has, taken at different angles, all pinned to a series of boards. Then she picks up a skull from the bench. Holds it up to the light, then against the alien man’s fiberglass one.
— That isn’t a
human
skull? I ask.
— No. It’s a gorilla’s. He died recently, at a zoo in Atlanta. It cost me a lot of money to source it. Unfortunately, it won’t do. She smiles at me and just for a second I’m beset with a terrible unease, then she puts the skull back, and the feeling goes.
AS AN ARTIST
Lena Sorenson is vague on her process, describing it as “differing from project to project.” But it is clear that she makes extensive sketches of her landscapes, and then draws her characters into it. It’s also known that Sorenson has started to use software previsualization tools, constructing sets and then dropping the figures into these spaces and manipulating their stances and relationships with each other. “I wanted to get a sense that although the image was part of a shifting scene, it would have the same static feel of permanence a sketch would. And these tools help me get exactly the correct spatial relationships between my figures.”
Sorenson, who has studied taxidermy, then assembles the skeletal structure of the creatures. Usually, with smaller pieces, this is done with the preserved bones of tinier birds and mammals. Sorenson creates a “new” creature by mixing the skeletal parts of old ones to form the frame, combining bone parts of arms, legs, and spinal columns. With larger compositions, bigger bones (particularly the skull and pelvis, which help define the look and posture and therefore the expressions and movement of this “new” creature) are more problematic. These are usually created from scratch, through the construction of molds. Sorenson then wires the bones together in sections. The next stage is to put “flesh” on these bones. Sorenson has been secretive about how this is done, but it probably involves the use of some synthetic claylike material, which is sculpted around the bones to form the figure, before the entire structure is placed into a huge box and moldings are made of the form. Sorenson then removes the “flesh” from the bone structures and places them into the premade molds and pours a resin inside, which sets around them.
This produces a figurine, or, increasingly, a full-scale figure, with greeny-brown exterior “skin.” The molded resin is translucent enough just to make the bones suspended inside it visible. Sorenson claims that she has been subliminally influenced by the chunks of fruit embedded in her mother’s Jell-O. She then applies a model-maker’s craft to add details; for example, she often puts real human hair spines onto the body.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Success
All I can say is that my mantra has always been whatever it takes. I don’t accept failure. Ever. Succeed by any means necessary.
How are the Morning Pages working out?
Michelle
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Success
Thank you. I desperately hoped, but ultimately knew, that was what you would say. Now I’m more convinced than ever that I’m right. You are truly an inspirational visionary, Michelle!
Luce x
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Success
Wow, such praise! Thank you! I try!
M x
PS The Morning Pages?
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Success
I tried and am still trying with the Morning Pages. You have motivated clients, Michelle, but this bitch, well, frankly she lacks respect. I gave her slovenly ass Morning Pages to write. Of course, she didn’t do them but just hastily cobbled some shit together that evening when I went to see her, cause some bug bit her fat booty.
I told her the pages were no good and I didn’t want to see them. Mentioned that they are called Morning Pages cause you do them in the MORNING! Duh!
L x
THERE ARE A
few of them back outside, at the front, just standing around, or sitting in parked cars. Usually at least two, sometimes more. Why do they do it? What the fuck do they want? There are a hundred minor celebs, on any given day, making fools of themselves at parties in South Beach. Yet every time they forget about me, Quist and Thorpe resume their onscreen toxic double act. Valerie isn’t returning my calls; other than the ocassional
Keep your head down
text, and checking I’ve received the Total Gym freebie, the bitch has blown me away.
Morning fucking Pages? Like you can
write
your way outta shit? Fuck that noise, we gotta talk reality.
Sorenson’s stats just ain’t cutting it. We’re almost two weeks into the program and she’s lost eight pounds. At this rate it’ll take FUCKING YEARS I DO NOT HAVE to sort out that time-wasting loser. The more she calls and the more I see her, the worse my life seems to get. It riles me that that fucking nutcase got me into this mess. If the candy-assed tubster hadn’t fucking filmed me on her phone and given it to those TV pricks, I’d never have had this level of celebrity and the subsequent witch hunt thrust upon me. And now she’s still fucking with me!
Drastic action is called for.
I’ll get nothing out of the Porky Pride of Potters Prairie, so I call up Miles. — So what went down? Or should I say, who? Did that firefighter’s hose see any action?