I found out
that my girlfriend had been posing nude for an online magazine called Cyclone
Pussy. Word was that it was a relatively tasteful magazine in
the style of the old pin-ups. The guy who had started it, I
learned, was a big time nudist. He gave sold out lectures at
Lehman College about the healing powers of nudity. His name was
Walter Hornacek.
Louie
Carnabuci at Throgg’s Neck Beer & Soda told me about the magazine.
He was a follower of Hornacek’s. He said good old Hornacek was a
mystic. He said my girlfriend Joanna was a follower too. He
said she wrote articles for Hornacek’s newsletter about what kind of
great mystic he was. I didn’t know anything about it. If
it was true, she hid it well. At first, I didn’t believe Louie.
I thought he was throwing shit. Then he started saying that I
shouldn’t be so upset. He said the whole thing was natural.
He said I should be proud of my girl, that she was brave. He said
he was only telling me because he thought it should be out in the open.
Well,
I started believing that Joanna really had done the things Carnabuci was
saying, and I almost throttled him right there. I wanted to snap
the dumpy wet cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth in two, but I
walked out of the joint, six-pack of Schaefer’s in tow, and headed
home.
Joanna
was still at work. I hit the computer. I did a search for Cyclone
Pussy. I felt rotten and dirty, but I had to see if it was
true. The first thing that popped up was the magazine.
Joanna was the fucking cover girl. She was wearing a pair of
dainty pink panties and a fragile-looking crucifix on a wispy gold chain
around her neck. And nothing else. The picture was very good.
Her hair was pulled up, really showing off her neck. Her breasts
looked like they had been polished. I was as angry as I had ever
been. I didn’t know what to do.
I
browsed through the rest of the pictures on the site. There were
hundreds of them. There were about ten of Joanna. The best
one had her sitting on a lawn chair wearing a short Catholic school girl
skirt, reading Finnegan’s Wake, a loose play on the famous
picture of Marilyn Monroe reading Joyce. I wondered how many
people had seen these pictures. I wondered how many desperate old
fuckers had pulled off to pictures of my girl. I was sick. I
went into the bathroom and vomited. What really got me steamed was
the fact that Joanna was naked for the world. She was just a click
away, her bare breasts available for anyone who wanted to look at them.
Where was the wonder in that? I couldn’t date her anymore, I
knew that much. I didn’t even know if I could look her in the
face again. Three years down the drain. I shut off the computer,
put on Hallowed Ground by Violent Femmes, sat down at the kitchen
table with a beer, and plotted my next move.
Joanna
would be home from work at seven-thirty. That gave me two hours.
I figured the best thing to do was to find Hornacek and confront him.
I didn’t know what I’d say or do, but I wanted to see him. I
wanted to tell him that he’d ruined my life. That he’d turned
my girl into some kind of whore. I finished my beer and gunned
another one. When Hallowed Ground was over, I shut the
stereo and all of the lights in the apartment and left. I knew I
would need to come back to a dark house.
I
went back to Carnabuci and asked, “Where can I find Hornacek?”
Carnabuci
said, “Don’t overreact, Jimmy.” He knew about my temper.
“Don’t
overreact? Give me the guy’s address, Carnabuci. Put it
down right here.” I took out a pad and pencil and handed it to
him. “Right now.” I bit down on my lower lip to show how
serious I was.
“Jimmy,
the guy’s practically a saint. He works in soup kitchens.
He gives all the proceeds from Cyclone Pussy to the poor.”
“I
don’t need a speech, Louie. I need an address.”
Eventually,
Carnabuci gave in and wrote down the address. He was shaking when
he did it. “Don’t do anything stupid, Jimmy,” he said.
“It’s just flesh. God’s great gift.”
I
pictured him jacking off to Joanna’s cover girl shot. Really
working it as he stared at that crucifix hanging between her breasts.
A hot feeling rose up in me. I turned over a Coors Light display
and bottles crashed to the floor. Beer sprayed out across the
shop. Then I kicked at the cigar display case until I broke the
glass out. I would have set the place on fire if I had a match.
Carnabuci
was whimpering.
I
walked out.
The
address he’d given me was in Silver Beach. When I got there, I
found Number Thirty-Six, a modest house with a neatly manicured front
lawn where garden gnomes surrounded a tall plastic statue of the Virgin
Mary. I went up and knocked on the door. A woman answered.
She was soft and old-looking, her sidewalk gray hair curled up in a
tight bun. She wore a fancy apron decorated with arrow-pierced
hearts.
“I’m
looking for Mr. Hornacek,” I said.
“How
can I help you?” she asked.
“Where’s
Hornacek?”
“Sir,
you can’t just barge in here.”
“You’re
Mrs. Hornacek?”
“Yes.”
“Your
husband’s a filthy fuck. You know about his magazine?”
“Sir?”
“Where’s
your husband, lady?”
“You
can’t just come to a person’s house and do this.”
I
charged past her into the living room. There wasn’t much there.
A couch, a couple of chairs, and a big hanging plant. It was
really modest. Hornacek wasn’t around. I went into the
kitchen, Mrs. Hornacek hot on my heels, and sniffed around for traces of
her filthy husband.
“Get
out of this house now, sir,” Mrs. Hornacek said. “Or I’ll be
forced to call the police.”
I
went over and pulled the phone out of the wall. I smashed it on
the floor.
Mrs.
Hornacek squealed.
“Listen,
lady,” I said. “Just tell me where your husband is. The
things he does, he’s got to pay.”
“What
things?”
“‘What
things?’ He ruins people’s lives. That’s what he does.
He turns innocent girls into whores.”
“Being
nude doesn’t make you a whore,” she said. “Appreciating your
own body and sharing it with others doesn’t make you a whore.”
“So,
you’re on board?” I was fuming. I got up in the lady’s
face. “You know all about this?”
“Your wife is Joanna?”
“Yeah.”
“I
took her pictures.”
“What?”
“I
took her pictures. She’s beautiful. You’re Jimmy.
She spoke about you. About how you two were going to get married
and go to Dublin for a honeymoon.”
I
didn’t know what to say. My steam was all the way up. Next
thing I knew I was reaching past her for a steak knife on the kitchen
counter. Then the steak knife was in my hand and I was snapping it
at her. I sunk it into her throat. The blood sprayed out
across my chest. She was squealing just like before, but it was
covered up by a kind of pathetic gurgling sound. She was clutching
her throat around the handle of the knife. Her eyes were crossed.
I thought about her taking Joanna’s pictures. She fell. I
turned around and walked out of the kitchen.
I
didn’t look back. I went into the bedroom and searched through
every closet and drawer. The Hornaceks didn’t own much. I
guess that was one of the advantages to being a nudist. I wondered
why Mrs. Hornacek wasn’t naked when she answered the door.
Anyhow, she was dead now. Or dying. Making one last gasp
around the deep sharpness of that knife. It was better that she
had on clothes. It wouldn’t have been as easy to put the knife
in if she had been naked. There would have been something
unsettling about stabbing her while she was naked.
There
was nothing weird anywhere in the house. It didn’t even look
like the Hornaceks had a computer. If they did, I guessed it was
somewhere else. I guessed Hornacek had an office. Maybe that
was where he was now.
Back
in the living room, I found Mrs. Hornacek’s car keys. She drove
a Volkswagen Rabbit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her spread
out dead on the kitchen floor, a puddle of blood blossoming around her.
I sat down on the couch. I didn’t smoke often, but I really
could’ve used a cigarette just then. I didn’t suppose the
Hornaceks kept any tobacco around, so I didn’t bother looking.
After a while, I took the car keys and went outside, locking the front
door behind me.
In
the car, I looked for some hint as to where Hornacek’s office might
be. Next thing I knew another car pulled into the driveway behind
me. I got out and greeted the driver. It was an old man
under the wheel of the car, about sixty, wearing a baseball cap and a
loose-fitting Yankees T-shirt. I didn’t think it could be
Hornacek. I rapped on the window and he rolled it down.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Mr.
Hornacek?” I said.
“Yes.”
“You’re
Hornacek?”
“Yes.
How can I help you?”
“Fuck,”
I said. “A shitty old man.”
“Excuse
me?”
“You
ruined me. You ruined my life. You ruined Joanna.”
“I
don’t understand.”
I
reached in and grabbed him around the throat. He tried to catch
some air. I cut across with my free hand and jabbed him in the
mouth. He jerked back, unable to draw breath. I tightened my
grip.
“You
know what you did,” I said. “You know what kind of person you
are. You ruin people’s lives. That’s what you do.
Right?”
He
said nothing.
I
tightened up even more. “Am I right, Hornacek?”
He
nodded over my chokehold.
“Let’s
go inside,” I said.
I
helped him out of the car and followed close behind him as we made our
way up to the front door. He was quiet the whole time, but I could
tell he was looking for an opportunity to bolt. I unlocked the
door, and we went in. It didn’t take him long to spot his wife,
signaled by the sunlight shining through the kitchen window onto the
knife sticking out of her throat. He collapsed to his knees.
“Your
wife took the pictures, I know that much. But she paid for your
sins, Hornacek.” I went over and pulled the knife out of Mrs.
Hornacek’s throat. A spray of blood erupted in an arc over her
body. Hornacek wailed.
I
went back over to him and pressed the knife—fresh with his wife’s
blood—against his cheek. He was crying and spitting up.
“You can’t just ruin lives,” I said. “People like you, you
don’t believe that there are consequences.” I pressed the
knife harder and drew a bead of blood.
He
started to say something but stopped.
“Where
do you keep the originals?” I asked.
“What?”
he asked.
“The
pictures of Joanna. The originals. Where are they?”
“They’re
all digital. They’re in my camera.”
“Where’s
your camera?”
“In
my car. In my laptop bag.”
“Can
you take her pictures off the website from your laptop?”
“Yes,”
he said.
I
tied him up, stuffing a rag in his mouth, and went out to the car to get
his laptop bag. When I came back, he had almost struggled free.
But he was still there. I kicked him in the face and told him to
make Joanna’s pictures disappear. I untied him. First, he
took out his camera and deleted the original pictures. Then he
flipped open his laptop, typing nervously and making a few quick moves
with the mouse. After a few minutes, he said it was done.
I
sat down across from him and sighed. “I’m sorry I killed your
wife,” I said.
“You’ll
burn in hell for it.”
“Maybe,”
I said. “But what you did, you’ll burn for that, too.
You ruined Joanna’s life. You ruined my life.”
“I
did nothing to you.”
I
was holding the knife at my side. I lifted it and showed it to him
again. His wife’s blood was hardening on the blade. He
began to cry again. “How would you like it if I took naked
pictures of your wife and posted them for everyone to see?” I asked.
“You
killed my wife, you son of a bitch.”
“I
know. I’m just saying. You’ve got to understand what a
rotten thing that is to do to another man. It tore my guts out
finding out about those pictures.”
He
started to speak, but I snapped the knife at him and it went deep into
his right eye. He screamed and collapsed forward, landing on the
butt-end of the knife, driving it in even deeper. The eye had
popped out around the blade. He writhed on the floor for a couple
of minutes and then went still. It seemed like a fitting death,
getting stabbed in the eye like that. It really spoke to the
situation.
I
locked the door behind me and took Mrs. Hornacek’s car home. I
didn’t have long. I wanted to see Joanna before the police found
me. I didn’t know what I would say to her, if I would even be
able to look at her, but I knew I needed to see her.
When
I got home, she was there. She was cooking. She was making
sirloin steak and red potatoes. It smelled great. She was
listening to “The Ballad of El Goodo” by Big Star on repeat, a song
she’d been obsessed with lately. She looked beautiful in a
‘50s polka dot rockabilly sundress. She looked like Bettie Page
with her sleek black hair, the bangs cut short across her forehead.
She greeted me with a kiss.
I
sat down at the kitchen table and cracked a beer. “I met
Hornacek,” I said.
She
screwed her face up. “Jimmy,” she said.
“No
need to explain.”
“But
Jimmy—”
“Do
you have a cigarette, Jo?”
“I
don’t smoke, you know that.”
“I
don’t know much, Jo.”
“It’s
not like that. Hornacek’s a great man. I was going to tell
you. It’s all very tasteful.”
“I’ve
heard.”
She
sat down across from me at the table and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t be mad,” she said. “Okay?”
“Sure,
Jo.”
It
was then that she noticed the blood on my clothes. She screamed.
She knew what it was. She knew I had a bad temper when I got
going. One time she had watched me beat a guy near death outside
of Paddy Doherty’s just for looking at her. I didn’t want to
hurt her, so I grabbed her and stuffed a dirty kitchen rag in her mouth.
I kept the rag in there by wrapping duct tape around her head.
Then I bound her feet and hands with duct tape until she was crumpled
crab-style on the floor. There was genuine fear in her eyes.
I guess just then she thought I had crossed some line and that I would
kill her. No matter how angry I was, I knew I couldn’t kill her.
The Hornaceks were one thing, but I could never put Joanna down like
that. She had turned into some kind of whore, but she deserved her
life.
I
put her in the closet and blocked the door with the small china cabinet
we kept in the dining room. It would take her a long while to get
out, but she would be fine. I put on a heavy pea coat to cover my
blood-stained clothes and took some CDs from the crate in the living
room—Hallowed Ground, Tim by The Replacements, Songs
the Lord Taught Us by The Cramps, Nick Cave’s Tender Prey—and
headed out to Mrs. Hornacek’s car. I started the car up and put Tender
Prey in the CD player. The first lines of “The Mercy Seat” cut
through me. I still wanted a cigarette. It would have to
wait. I drove up East Tremont, cut a left on Harding, and headed
straight for the Throgg’s Neck Bridge. I turned the radio up
loud.
My mother lived in
Dix Hills, Long Island in the same house where I grew up. My
father was dead, and the house was big and empty. I made it to my
mother’s by nine-thirty, and she was glad to see me. She
wondered why I hadn’t called, but I told her Joanna and I had been
fighting and I needed a place to stay. She said something about my
heavy coat, but I let it go. If there was any blood visible on me,
she didn’t let on.
My
basement room was just as I had left it when I went away to college ten
years earlier. There were posters of Nick Cave, Robert Smith,
Morrissey, and Johnny Cash on the wall above the bed. There was a
crate of old LPs and a portable record player set out on my desktop.
My old Royal typewriter was on the floor in the corner. My closet
was filled with flannel shirts and torn jeans, remnants of my grunge-era
wardrobe. I sat down on the bed. Suddenly, I remembered
something: A hiding spot. A place where I stashed cigarettes as a
teenager. I wondered if there was anything left.
There
was a little slot in the floorboard by the closet under a heavy stack of
books that had not been moved in years. I moved the books and felt
around inside the slot. There was a pack of Lucky Strikes.
They were stale and cold, but they still smelled good. There was
also a box of matches in the slot. I took one out, struck it on
the back of the box, and it flickered slowly and caught. I lit the
cigarette and went over to the window, opening it and holding my
cigarette outside. I wondered how long it would be now until they
got me. I hoped like hell that Joanna didn’t choke on the rag I
shoved in her mouth. I didn’t think it would take too long for
her to work herself free.
When
I finished the cigarette, I decided to get cleaned up. I showered,
scrubbing hard where drizzles of blood had crusted on my arms.
Next I washed my clothes and slipped into an old Soundgarden T-shirt and
ratty jeans. I listened to records and smoked Luckies until dawn.
I couldn’t sleep.
At
first light, I went for a walk. There was a Hess station a few
blocks away on Lincoln. I went there and got a large cup of coffee
and a pack of Black Jack gum. Black Jack had been my favorite type
of gum as a kid. They had recently put it back on the market.
The girl behind the counter looked familiar. She was looking at me
the same way, like we knew each other.
“I
know you?” she asked.
“I
don’t know,” I said. “My name’s Jimmy Mara.”
“No
shit.” She came around the counter and gave me a big hug.
“Annie Logan,” she said.
We
had gone to high school together. It had been a long time since I
had seen her. She had gained a little weight and her hair was dyed
platinum blonde. “Hi,” I said.
“What
are you doing here?” she asked.
“Visiting
my mother.”
“No
shit.” She went back behind the counter and rang me up.
“Black Jack gum,” she said. “Like Christian Slater in Pump
Up the Volume.”
“Yeah.”
“That
was my favorite movie as a kid. I wanted to be Samantha Mathis.”
“You
kinda look like her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I took a sip of my coffee and headed for the door. “Good night,
Annie. Nice seeing you.”
She
came out from behind the counter again. “Listen. I get off
in five minutes. I live over on Deer Park Avenue. You wanna
come over for a drink?”
“A
drink?”
“Yeah.
I’ll spike your coffee.”
I
thought about my options. At least nobody would find me there.
“Sure,” I said.
She
looked excited. “Wait for me in the parking lot. I’ve
just gotta wait until Andy gets here, and then I can split.”
“Okay.”
I went outside and waited. I had the old pack of Luckies in my
pocket, and I smoked one. There were only five left. I
thought about getting another pack but decided against it.
Annie
came out about ten minutes later. We got in her car, a rusted blue
Honda Accord that was at least fifteen years old. “Bear with
me,” she said. “Sometimes it takes a while to start.”
She
got the car going after a couple of minutes, and we sped out of the
parking lot. She put a tape into the old deck in the center of the
dashboard. The White Stripes doing “Death Letter” blared from
the speakers. Annie spoke over it, saying: “I’ve been working
at the Hess station for six months. I’m working on a book.”
I
nodded.
“It’s
a detective novel.”
I
nodded again.
“If
I don’t sell it, I guess I’ll go back to school for teaching.
But I can’t stand the thought of teaching great literature to snotty
kids. Not when I should be writing it.” She paused.
“What have you been up to lately?”
“Murder
and mayhem,” I said.
A
big laugh exploded out of her. “That’s fucking good, Jimmy.
Yeah, enough of this boring get-to-know-you shit. It’s bullshit.
Half of what people say to each other is absolute bullshit. I’m
sorry I started it. I’m guilty of bullshitting as much as the
next person, I guess.”
“Not
at all. I was just kidding. I’m an electrician.”
“You
married?”
“No,”
I said. “Had a girlfriend, but we just split up.”
“Sorry
to hear it.”
“How
about you?” I asked. “You married?”
“Fuck
no. Writers shouldn’t get married until they’re fifty.”
“I
think I read that on a wall somewhere once.”
She
laughed again.
Back at Annie’s
place, I took a shot of Jameson in my coffee and settled down on the
couch. Annie had some stories she wanted to show me. I read
them. They weren’t bad. There was one about two
strippers—one white and one black—robbing a bank that was pretty
good. It had tons of cleavage in it. I’d never seen
cleavage described in so many different ways. Mary Dempsey, the
white stripper, had “two watermelons hung from the middle of her
chest, the shadowy crevice between them black and long.” Gilda
Armstrong, the black stripper, had “cleavage that exploded from her
pink brassiere, her big black breasts topping out just under her
chin.”
Annie
asked, “What do you think?”
“Good
stuff,” I said. “I don’t know much, but I like these.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve
really got a gift for describing cleavage.”
“I
know,” she said, laughing. “Nobody else seems to appreciate
it, though. My stories keep getting rejected. I have a whole
filing cabinet filled with rejection slips.”
“Listen,”
I said. “You have any more Jameson?”
“Sure.”
She poured another shot into what was left of my coffee.
“Thanks.”
“So,
this girlfriend you had—What happened?”
“She
betrayed me.”
“How?”
“Don’t
really wanna talk about it, Annie.”
“I’m
sorry. It’s private. I’ve got such a big mouth
sometimes.”
We
sat in silence for a while. Annie drank whiskey straight from the
bottle and wiped off her mouth on the back of her sleeve.
I
broke the silence. “That part of your stories where the
strippers have sex in the bank vault,” I said. “What made you
think of that?”
“I
don’t know,” Annie said. “It kind of turned me on, I guess.
The whole idea of it.”
“Yeah,”
I said. “It was good. I could really see it. All
that cleavage flying around. It was very life-like.”
“Thanks,
Jimmy.”
“Don’t
mention it,” I said.
“Do
you smoke weed?” She took a joint out of the breast pocket of
her Hess shirt and held it up.
“Not
usually.”
“You
want some now?”
“Sure.
What the hell?”
She
lit it up, and we passed it back and forth a few times. When we
got down to the end, we were giggling and burning our fingers on the
roach. Annie said, “How long are you in town, Jimmy?”
I
said nothing. I could feel the laughter welling up in me, but it
wouldn’t come.
“Earth
to Jimmy,” Annie said. “I asked how long you were in town
for.”
“I
think I’m moving back in with my mother,” I said. I knew it
wouldn’t happen like that, but, at that instant, high and half-drunk
there on Annie’s couch, it sure felt like I was saying something that
was true.
“Really?”
Annie asked.
“Yeah,”
I said. “Really.”
Copyright 2007 by
William Boyle
William Boyle
lives in the Bronx and has also published stories in Thuglit,
Out of the Gutter, and Hardluck
Stories.
