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TWELVE

The bank – on sheer coffee – had been hell. Uphill five block walk. Standing in line twenty staring minutes. It was the day after Veteran’s Day or Thanksgiving or the death of the governor or some damn thing. Sixteen hours of business to conduct in the usual eight. I tried not to feel sorry for the clerks. Wasn’t hard. Easier, the longer I stood. Sweat sliming palms. Pressure cooking blood. Banging inside temples. Breathing electric heat of stuffy bank. Overdressed for cold rain outside.

Finally reached a lady. Showed plastic, signed paper. Waited, sweated while she checked. Because something was funny about my signature. Of course there was. I’d been drunk two or five weeks.

She returned with a mincing smile, having somehow mysteriously confirmed my identity. I had the money. All fifteen hundred dollars of it. Cleaned out my account. No more caught short five days late with the rent. Not for the next several months.

Also lugged back five cases of beer. Forty-five quarts. Weighing in at ninety pounds – excluding aluminum and cardboard. Piled the beer up on the mattress. I was shaking uncontrollably. Hungover, dragging all that weight two blocks, after having gone through exquisite agony purchasing goods at Safeway.

I sat on the couch trembling, eyeing the hundred and twenty cans stacked up on my muddy, torn, rumpled mattress. I wouldn’t have to leave my room for any reason at all. Not for a few days, at least. Wondered if perhaps I should eat breakfast. Couldn’t remember if there was any grub.

Glancing into the kitchen, trying to focus on food, spotted a convoy of mg’s, vw’s, scooters and trikes making their way up the wall behind the stove. Allowing for nervous tics and latent double-vision, after several seconds’ intense staring, I put their number at nine to twelve, possibly as many as fifteen. And this in broad daylight. The vermin were getting brazen.

Stood. Picked a pistol up off the floor beside the phone. Took three ataxic steps out into the nook. To my right, a mountain of suds. The sink had thrown up… again… recently… while I was dealing with that idiot of a teller? Getting carded, signature not good enough? Or struggling past elderly shoppers toward the beer display at Safeway? Or maybe suds spewed out of the patina-ed brass drain as I piecemeal eviscerated my wallet of ID, in order to convince the checker I was indeed old enough to purchase ninety pounds of beer. He believed me; but felt there must be some special ritual necessary. Not everyday does he sell a hundred and twenty cans of beer to a thirty-five year old white male part-time office clerk.

And – six tires in the air – atop the froth, lay the corpse of a two-inch eldorado. Not only did the outlandish size catch my attention: a dusty, webby sort of sack clung to her corrugated yellow-tan abdomen.

Her? Yes, indeed, I discerned, as I leaned down and looked closer: dead babies. About forty of ‘em. All pinpoint tiny. Brown and black gnats caught in a wisp of cobweb smudged to the belly of mom. She had been pregnant, ready to deliver, when the vomiting sink drowned her. All forty infants dead.

Knock at the door.

Looked up at the convoy. They were making a good fifty millimeters per second toward the ceiling. Even the minute trikes and scooters, bringing up the rear and scattered along the flanks, were keeping speed. A good-sized vw – a rabbit – occupied the van; feelers scanning path ahead. Not bothering to deviate from a narrow arc of inspection. Very low state of paranoia. Almost classifiable as relaxed. If that wasn’t too much of a contradiction in terms: a relaxed roach.

Knock again. Louder. At the door.

I had never seen a dead mother. Much less one with forty stillbirths attached in some kind of primitive amniotic sack. Glanced back at the forty-one corpses riding the suds.

Knock, knock, KNOCK!

“OPEN UP!” a hoarse scream penetrated the door. “I know you’re in there, ya son of a bitch! OPEN UP!”

Dropped the rolled-up, rubberbanded Wall Street Journal to the cement. Stepped out of the nook. Trekked across the mattress, hungrily eyeing the beer. Stood with my nose to the door and hollered, “Who the fuck is it, please?”

“THE LAW! You don’t open up – we’ll break it down!”

I thought, for a millisecond, about all the absurdities this outburst might imply. A hoax? Death? Did I rape a child while I was going to the bank or navigating Safeway? Was this it? Were they going to shoot? Opened the door.

Her. Space Lady. She was outraged. She bumped me aside. Strode into the room.

Standing on the mattress beside the beer in her dirty bare feet, she wheeled; slammed hands on hips. Her bushy eyebrows were thick and dark as thunderheads, her face the color of hail.

“YOU CALLED THE COPS ON ME!” she blared in my face. “Didn’t’cha, ya little STOOLIE!”

I went over and sat down on the couch. Held head in hands. Why her here now?

“Think I’m supposed to be in jail right now, DON’T’CHA?”

I looked up. How the hell did she know..?

“I’m out on recog, I’ll have you know. Them cops couldn’t make it stick. Never been able to; never will. What I wanna know is – how come you called down HEAT on me? You got no RIGHT pulling crap like that!”

I glanced neurotically out into the kitchen. The convoy was gone. The wreck of the eldorado – barely visible from this distance of over ten feet – had settled slightly on her bier of suds. They released these kinds of people on their own recognizance?

“Yes, I’m out on recog! For one thing, the jail’s overcrowded. They got too many real crooks in there – murderers, armed robbers, computer maniacs, butcher doctors… and for another: they know good and goddamn well they got no CORPUS. I ain’t done a thing. Nothing could be PROVED. So they let me walk.”

Of course. Naturally. They released her – who’d want to corral, cage and then maintain a creature like this bulky obstreperous toad?

“YOU GOT SOMETHING AGAINST ME? Well, lemme tellya, buster,” she dragged on her cigarette, moderated her tone, “if you do, I got it in for you. And I got ways to contact creatures from places you never imagined. Beings could cut your balls in a zillion slivers quicker than a dime drops through a candy machine. So don’t get on my bad side. I got connections you might call out of this, uh, world. And I…”

She smoked, droned on. Monologue drooled like a grossly leaking spigot. Caught words here and there. Lost the facts like recognizable drips in water slurring onto rusty porcelain. Didn’t matter. I was homing, at the time, on that grimy sack dress. In particular, the barbwire hem at which the shins disappeared… what else was up there? Ragged panties? Stained boxer shorts? Frayed cotton bra? Threadbare BVDs? Truss of surgical steel and polyvinyl chloride? Was the doomed eldorado actually a mother? A female? A woman? No…

“It wasn’t me,” I spoke up, breaking her stream of gibberish. “Must’ve been somebody else. Frankly, I was too drunk… I mean…”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?” She flipped her butt onto the mattress, where it began at once to smolder. “If you have the least INKLING what I’m talking about… then you must be kin to information no other way you could get it than to call the cops. Is there a REWARD? Why else would you sink so low? Rat on a neighbor; report a drinking buddy to the cops; I bet you’d mount your own mother.”

I stood up. My stomach quivered. My head burned. I had to put out that damn smoldering butt.

“DON’T YOU COME AFTER ME! Touch me and I KILL YA! Turn me over to the cops on false pretense, yeah, maybe – but you don’t INVADE ME!”

Stepped on the sheet. Smothered ember. Already a scorch big as a quarter. Mashed foot into the batting. Felt cold cement floor through dirty rug, mattress, wet sneaker.

“THIS TIME I KNOW IT WAS YOU! Wasn’t like before when you antenna-crossed me into thinking wasn’t you brought by them galactic bullfrogs mental health sent down knocking on my door; my therapy going so good and all.”

Scrutinized her vast-pupilled eyes. “Look,” I said. “This is kind of embarrassing; but, well… I wondered if perhaps you’d kiss me?’

( )

And like that I had my tongue roving her smoke-cured mouth. Didn’t take any thought at all. That’s why it felt right – no thought. But then I recalled that penis she was supposed to have. Or the lie detector. Her radar. Her outer space contacts. The antennas I had crossed…

Her lips pressed against mine earthwormlike. Chill. Wriggling. Or was that her heart – pulsing through buccal vessels? Or my impression of blood flooding into my own penis? No – I smiled inside a growing awareness – no, I was not too hungover to get hard!

“Hey, man!” Butler’s voice. “Is it all right if I come in?”

The tobacco mouth squirted away. Just another lady exiting my space... half-lady half-exiting, half-entering memory.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything?” he said.

“What are you doing here?’

“Thought I’d stop by to thank you, man.”

“But I thought you were downtown. In jail or something, I mean…” I collapsed on the couch; felt stupid, sick, embarrassed. Much slower than I wished it to, the erection shrank.

The phone rang. No idea what else to do, answered the thing. Had I actually kissed that filthy insane battle-axe?

“Hello?”

“Woody?”

“Yes, this is me… him… he…”

“When are you coming back to work, Woody?”

My supervisor’s voice. My ex-supervisor. My perennial supervisor. Nearly gagged on a flash of Space Lady’s mouth’s taste – diesel, demerara, Bugler. Mustered my faculties. Leaped over the top, rushing blindly the foe: “I’ve got fifteen hundred dollars and five cases of beer says you can go fuck yourself. You know I don’t like you calling up like this; we’re strictly on a basis of I call you; you don’t call…”

“Woody, listen, I’m serious – stop clowning. You know damn well I wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency. I didn’t get to be a supervisor by harassing my employees. I got here by doing my job, day after day. And that’s what I’m doing now – my job. Woody – we’re more than willing to tolerate your eccentricities, but…”

“I am not your employee.”

“Would you just come back to work for a few days? So we could get things around here straightened out? You walked out at a difficult time. Recent budget cuts prevent us from hiring new personnel until next summer. Nobody knows your job. Even if we could get a replacement, we have nobody to trainany such replacement. Usually before you go, you give us a little notice.”

“This isn’t my problem. I quit. If it’s a check or a tax form or a sick-day cashout – you know where to mail it. If it’s anything else, you know where to stick it.”

“Woody… we here at the hospital sometimes worry that perhaps you might be engaged in illegal activities when you’re not in our employ and have no visible means of support. You wouldn’t want us to note that in your file… your employee profile… as if you gave a damn… I mean… Oh, c’mon, Woody – don’t make my job any harder than it already is. You see, frankly, we’ve had chaos ever since you left. None of the affidavits or invoices get filled out right. Nobody knows what forms to order. Mail gets misrouted. Everything’s backlogged. Damnit! The copier hasn’t even functioned properly since you left. Nobody can unjam that sucker the way you could… Woody? Are you still there? Woody..?”

“Who was on the phone?” Butler grumbled.

“Some asshole.” I sat up and took in the scene – Butler lounged in the chair by the closet; Space Lady stood stock-still on the mattress, brows knitted, glowering at where the ceiling met the wall just above the window. Craned back to see her target… four feet above my head… “How’d you get in?”

“You left the door wide open, man. Look, I hate to barge in on you like this, but I wanted to thank you for bailing me out. Somebody’s gonna come down here in a minute and finalize the financial arrangements. Spam Face engineered it all. I was gonna call. But she said, ‘Oh no, don’t bother – Woody never answers his phone.’ And, well, I’ve seen evidence supporting that statement, so I took her advice and she got in touch with your manager. That chick sure can be an asshole; but I guess she comes through with an idea occasionally. Did I tell you what happened the other day when I was over here and you got so drunk you passed out while rolling a joint?”

“Huh?” There didn’t seem to be anything on the ceiling. Grungy cobwebs, buckled paint; usual cracks and stains. Of course, maybe one of these anomalies distinctly represented the bud of an alien entering from the fourth dimension. Space Lady caught me looking up at where she stared. She got busy rolling a cigarette.

“Yeah, man,” Butler said. “She tried to kiss me. I couldn’t believe it. Before I know what’s what, she’s planting her trap on my lips. Have you ever seen that face of hers close up? God, man: not only is it shiny and pink – it’s scaly. Like the ass of a gila monster or a smoked salmon. God, she had me standing up and practically reaching for my rod, I was so pissed!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just plain fear?” I said.

“Hey, man,” Butler grinned exaggeratedly, kicked out legs, crossed at the ankles lug-soled boots, “how do I know why her face is like that? Maybe it’s a virus. Transmitted by mouth. Picked it up snorting coke and lipping spics down in Mexico or Chile or wherever it was she couldn’t hack working in the backroom of that liquor store. Then she invites herself along to dinner last night.”

“It’s in her brain. Psychosomatic eruption. That’s why the terminal acne. I doubt you could contract her entire syndrome orally. Not all the subtle complications, the byzantine rami--”

“Still it was rude to tag along and do her best to ruin our genuine rib dinner. One of the few times I have ever managed to get you to emerge from your shell. Why is it you got such a trauma about going out? Oh, I know, you prefer to sit down here and read books and be left alone. But…”

“Money? Did you say something a while back about money?”

“They’re up there,” said Space Lady, matter of fact, lighting her butt. “You can’t see ‘em. But radar tunes ‘em in.” She flipped the smoking match onto the mattress.

“You do realize that you got me out on bail, right?” Butler sat forward on his chair, grabbed knees with lanky fingers, rolled eyes up at me. “Spam Face told you that much?”

“Betty and I sleep together; yell at each other; she drinks my beer. But we’re hardly on what you’d call speaking terms. No. She never said anything about me shelling out bucks so you could…”

“Hey, man,” he frowned, creaked back in the chair, “you’ll get it back. Long as I make it to work tonight before midnight. They say if you miss a day during your first month, you’re fired. I get paid again in another two weeks… less’n that – ten or twelve days. You’ll have your money back in no time.”

Budd came in. “Woodrow,” he said, “I gotta have eleven hundred dollars. Now.”

“IT’S A BALD PINK TENTACLE FROM SKYROS!” she screamed, backpedaling across the mattress into the kitchen nook.

“Do you got the money or don’t ya?” Budd ignored the scream and watched me from his ruined face. “This is much more serious than merely owin’ for the rent, Mr. Shelton.”

“Here, take it,” I unwrinkled hundred dollar bills from pockets. When I had eleven, I handed them over, saying, “But look, you fat old fuck – what’s this eleven hundred for? As if I couldn’t guess… one hundred dollars rent, a thou for bail and parking tickets… I just want to hear it from your own puckered lips.”

“Because you got me PREGNANT! You shoved that tentacle up my ORGAN! THAT’S WHY I REFUSE TO COMMUNICATE!”

“Well shut up, then,” said Butler.

“It’s for getting’ that guy outta jail. The handsome bastard Betty’s in love with. That fuggin’ slut talked me into puttin’ up the money. Under the security, naturally, you was gonna reimburse me pronto. But if I don’t see that cash right away, Mr. Shelton, like she promised you’d be glad to pay me and she’d already spoken to you and you was on your way to the bank and I see you ain’t on your way to no bank and I might add that late charge is getting slapped on…”

“Budd, Budd, look,” I eventually wedged in, “I’ve already been to the bank. I just gave you the money. Cash. Budd – the money is in your hand.”

He noticed it. The fist closed. Then opened, as he unfolded and carefully counted bills.

“Hand me one of those beers, wouldja?” said Butler. “All this goddamn screaming is getting on my nerves.”

Since Budd was busy counting bucks into his wallet, Space Lady catatonic in the kitchen, Butler lazy as usual… I leaned down. Grabbed off two cans. Stepped over. Put one into Butler’s extended palm. Kept the second for myself.

Sat down. Cracked open can. Filled mouth with suds. Gulped. So another sober day eluded my grasp.