“Why don’t you all shut up?” The room filled into an immediate hush as Kiko snarled, whipping her neck around jaw first.
“You… you just stand there waiting to hear me read the same words that you read to yourself. The same words that you make mean whatever you want them to mean. You think they’re written for you, but these are my words. Monika used to say… Kiko you’re my porcelain muse, stay near me so I can write. Never shatter.” Kiko licked her lips, fighting the endless desert in her mouth.
“I can’t do this.” Choking up with two fingers inserted past the knuckle, Kiko shook Gloom’s latest novel like it was an extension of her fist.
“Pale skin and pale words.” Lars rolled his eyes, twitching on account of the unwanted attention. The gawkers that weren’t wrapped up in Kiko’s trance were staring down Lars from all corners of the room.
“What do we do now?” I was getting restless, short-attention span and all.
“Listen.” Hawaii used a roguish whisper to undress Kiko on stage.
The crowd cynically dished out unintelligible jeers intended as support. Kiko inhaled deeply, opening the hardcover as she exhaled into the microphone, “This is an excerpt from Viscous by Monika Gloom…” Everyone started clapping like their favorite band finally sobered up enough to take stage. Kiko dramatically stared at a sky blocked by a black ceiling. When she was finally ready her eyes fell back on the page. “The uncivilized fathers of New Amsterdam cannot comprehend the biological clock of the immortal undead. I have seen more sunrises than the city’s bridges have been masturbated by river waves. I have tasted more necks than the soil has swallowed plague ridden bones… that’s it… she’s dead… I’m sorry…” Kiko and most of the Gloom groupies in the room seemed to have the passage memorized. Stomachs grumbled to be fed their idol. Heartbroken fans stormed the stage, prying the book from Kiko’s hands. Ripped pages filled the room, twisting and twirling through the air, landing on candles with poofs of smoke.
I noticed Lars shaking his head and found myself shaking mine in agreement. Whatever happened tonight was over and done with. Hawaii gazed in wonder at the strange man making his way across the room. Detective Anderson motioned to me and it seemed like a good time to get some fresh air.
“It was nice seeing you guys. Give Detective Anderson my regards.”
“Who?” Hawaii and Lars exchanged suspicious glances.
{VIII}
BLACK RAIN. WRITING IS A race against death. The only difference that the present moment had over the day to day was the assassin slicing up the competition and leaving my calling card behind in torn from the binding. Usually when I left a room of writers, a suspicion lingered that my delusions were justifiable.
Cloud sweat pounded my armor chest. I could only march on unashamed to ruin or fame. Delivery guys in their makeshift ponchos chugged forward through the honks. The city was mad with hunger and willing to pay dearly for her secret fetish. It had been a long time since I’d seen or been seen. Seasons had passed since the public success of my pilfered novel. It was no mystery to any of them that I was sitting around chanting obsessed curses of vengeance.
Nude in the dim lighting, Missy moved in a trance of summoned passion. The music was loud enough that she didn’t notice me at first. When she did catch my eye, it was with a gas chamber stare. A metaphoric blade at my throat.
“Practicing for the old man?”
I was staring lost into the East River. I didn’t remember exactly how I got there, but I could remember other things. Spend enough time in this town and every corner becomes stage for a memory. There was a bench at my side that I just couldn’t sit on. Last time I sat on that bench, Missy stood behind me with searing eyes.
“You’re not a man.” Her words were forever etched.
“You don’t even know what a man is.”
“You’re not a man, Farrow.”
“A man survives.”
“What?”
“A man survives. That’s all.”
Missy’s reasoning at the time was based on nothing more than what she wanted me to decide for her. I had already made my decision before I met her. Just the same, she had already made her decision before she met me.
“You’re no writer.” Engorged, her breasts shook as we waited on line at the supermarket. She was pregnant. Hormonal.
“What do you want?”
“I have no idea. I only know what I don’t want.”
“Then what don’t you want?”
“I don’t want you here. I don’t want your baby living inside me.”
“It’s our baby. Not only mine.”
“It’s nothing.”
Missy had room for a dozen razors under her tongue. She explained how she had no choice. We weren’t ready. She had to kill it. Now ghosts of dead publishers and overly ambitious writers were at my sides. I wondered if anything changed. The bench was still there. I wanted to rip it out of the ground and throw it in the fucking river. That’s just what I needed to do, so I did it.
{IX}
THE BENCH DIDN’T FLOAT AND neither did I. Rain arpeggiates the river’s surface helping along the three foot swells. Above the water the city is a shimmering miracle. A rough menstrual drain pouring from Gotham’s luscious lips. The entire planet was spotted with blood to drown in. I was more a part of it than it wanted me to be. The bench was sinking somewhere below me. I could no longer see her, but I knew she… I mean it…was still there.
“What do you want me to say?… um let me see Farrow… how about… I just give you more material for your book.”
“My book?”
“A Greater Truth… if it even exists! Not everything in life is material for your book. Please don’t make me material for my book.”
“Your book? What the fuck are you talking about?”
She called it her book. I was taking her serious up until that point. I should’ve taken her even more mysterious when she let that claim slip. If the night carried out in the direction it was heading, my last book would forever be credited to someone else. Motherfuck memories. Thoughts of the woman were electrocution. Unfortunately, the river made certain things far and others close. How strange to be alone anywhere in this city. Fighting the current would only tire me. Bobbing between silence and droning echoes… between the townhouse Percy’s life was taken and Gloom’s death-stained cave.
After the Williamsburg, there were two more bridges for me to pass under before I was out to sea. I too wanted to join in the killing, but I set my goals higher than one of my own. I wanted God dead by sunrise. The fantastical concept reflected itself illuminated. It would be a traditional crime of revenge, jealousy, and awe all in one. Such an overweight sacrilege bordered on immortal innocence. Somebody already discovered the nuclear bomb more than a half-century ago, but took their finger off the button too soon. Fuck it… maybe that’s how civilization began in the first place. Either way the almighty appeared to be immune from any technology our tumored brains could design in self-hate.