I take the flask. I’m seventeen, I’m not an idiot. I drink his nasty shrimp whiskey. A lot. Most of it. Then all of it. I set the empty flask back down on the table. I shake my head no. That’s when the asshole grabs my wrist and twists it and says, “Look you little teen monster bitch, you’re gonna hand over that footage or I’m gonna come take it from you. By any means necessary.”
Everything next is sound.
The sound of Marlene shoving her chair back and standing up. The sound of silverfuck doing the same. Still holding my wrist so I’m yanked up like a scary doll. The sound of “Get your motherfucking hands off of the girl” coming from Hakizamana Ojo. Deep and true and macho ghetto menacing. The sound of silverfuck saying “You don’t know who you are messing with, faggot.”
And then a single, mindbogglingly cool continuous shot: Marlene pulling an ice-pick from inside the sleeve of her silk white blouse and crossing over to silverfuck and headlocking him and bending his free arm behind his back and jamming the ice-pick up against his neck just enough to make him yell and let go of my wrist.
Told you he was good at his security job.
I back away from the scene. Panting. But not fainting. Sometimes saviors look different than you thought they would.
I wish I could say something really great happened here. But life isn’t like it is in the movies. Silverfuck, even in his distorted head and arm lock, begins to laugh. Marlene’s eyes go bigger. I look behind me.
Silverfuck narrates, “I hope you don’t mind, Ida,” he gurgles under the thick choke hold of Marlene, “I’ve taken the liberty of calling your parents.”
In the doorway are Peppina and my ashen alien father. In my gut is the inescapable truth of my life.
“What on earth?” my father says.
“Ida!” she vixen shrieks.
Only one thing to do. I puke.
25
IN THE DREAM, I WALK AROUND IN SOME CITY I DON’T know. Classical piano music score. I see cobblestone streets and town squares, which are strange to me except from shitty ass historical drama flicks. Then I come into a house where I live and find a letter from my mother saying “your father is dead and if you like you can cum.” I go down a road and ask about a gazillion times: “where is the station?” But the people are like zombies how they are in dreams. I see a thick wood before me and see the station in front of me and I run toward it, but it’s pretty much like running in Jell-O, and I can’t reach it.
I wake up. I’m totally sweating. I look over at my digital clock. It’s five a.m. And something else. I am drenched between my legs.
The whole rest of the “night” I think about that fucking dream. I know exactly what the Sig would say. He’d say I want my dad dead for betraying me. But I have guilt about that, because, you know, wanting your dad dead is kind of not cool. I know what Siggy would say about the woods, too. He’d say it’s a sexual landscape. He’d say what I really want is for Mr. Lechbo K. to penetrate those woods and fuck me silly as revenge against my dumb dad.
Honestly I don’t know what crack pipe that guy smokes sometimes.
Wanna know what I think it means?
I think I dream my dad out of the way so I can find a woman. Maybe my mother. No, I don’t forgive her for her lame-ass lapsed motherhood. But I can still hear the sound of her playing piano in my head. I think when she played the piano she was trying to tell me something. Something about art. But then her marriage tanked and she went numbimbo and I turned into me.
I think the woods in the dream are in the way, and yeah, they may be a vag map, but I think I’m supposed to go straight through them — vag to vag — to see for myself what’s on the other side. I think she’s been keeping a secret all these years.
I put my hand between my legs. Sticky. I bring my hand to my mouth. Salty apples. I roll over on my side. I pull the covers over me. I get fetal. I roll around in the bed under the covers. You come from salty goo. Salty goo comes out of you. Maybe it all boils down to vag’s, but that’s not nothing. Under the covers it’s beautiful and dark.
At about 8:30 a.m. I get a knock on my bedroom door. “Ida?” Fucking Peppina the ho. “Are you decent?” she says.
Am I?
After I pull on my skinny jeans and a Velvet Underground T-shirt I open the door. The look on her face is a cross between frightened and fascist. Honest.
She comes in.
She sits on the edge of my bed. If you’ve lived through teenager you’ve witnessed several of these sit-downs. They are never, ever, good.
Peppina is wearing a red sweater with a V-neck so low her cleavage looks cavernous. If I was a man there would be no way to talk to this woman and look her in the eye. Hell, even as me I can’t look her in the eye. I literally feel vertigo. Like I’m gonna fall into that boob cavern. What a way to go, huh?
“Ida,” Peppina says, and briefly I think wow. We have the two stupidest names in the history of the planet. What’s so hard about coming up with cool girl names? Like Obsidian.
“Your father thinks perhaps you and I might be able to talk more easily about things,” Peppina says. “Woman to woman.” She takes a deep breath.
Dudette. You are so not my mother.
She takes an even deeper breath. I watch her cleavage. Watch out! Those bad boys may blow! I catch myself thinking. Then, really? My idiotic alien dad thinks you should talk things out with me? Perfect.
“I know you are going through a difficult time,” she says, “and I want you to know that I understand. I do. My own parents were divorced when I was just ten years old. I want you to know that you can talk to me. Because of that. Because I understand.”
If I had a voice right now? I’d tell her to fuck the fuck off. Since I don’t? I pick my nose.
She smiles. “Oh Ida. That kind of thing isn’t going to work on me. I’m not … stupid.”
She scoots over closer to me. I can smell her hoo doo perfume. What’s she up to? I sit in my cone of silence and try to will her sweater to fly off.
“Listen,” she says in the voice of a vixen, “How about you and I start over? I’d like to take you shopping.”
Shopping?
Is this woman insane?
She inches over ever closer and puts her hand on my knee. My crotch goes warm. My face gets hot. I shake my head no.
“Ida,” she says, and now she reaches over and holds my face in her hands, “I think we could be friends.”
I yank my face away.
Peppina moves so close to me she’s nearly sitting on me. She takes my face in her hands again. This time, she holds my jaw more firmly. “Ida, I have strong feelings for you. Why, I remember when you were just a child…”
You are so so not my mother.
I avoid eye contact. I stare down. But you know what’s down there. The cavern. Those enormous pendulous orbs. Whiter than bread. The wicked perfume. Her tits rise and fall with her breathing. The perfume gets all up in my nose. I can’t help it. I want to bury my face in her tits. I want to almost maul her like a chimp. Then she lifts my face up toward hers and kisses me about a centimeter away from my lips, all slow motion-y, my mug still between her hands.
I’ve still got the booger from before, you know.
You know how sometimes you do shit you don’t really know where it came from? Yeah. I grab her headful of redhead. My hands sort of disappear in all those waves of auburn hanging around her face and shoulders — I mean it’s mythic — I carefully plant the booger in her perfect hair and then? Eye to eye I lay a big hard wet one right on her mouth.
With tongue.
She pulls back. Slaps me a hot one. I smile. The lingering taste of salt and apples … at least to me.