I felt queasy about his theory and about the little boy. I felt confused. I knew adultery was O.K., as was homosexuality and prostitution, but what about incest and older people taking advantage of younger ones? What about murder and cannibalism? It all made me uneasy because I could foresee being able to understand almost anything. I knew extreme behavior-hate, lust, domination — could be, as in Madison's case, just an extreme type of self-preservation. And I knew too that Habee would agree with Madison, that it was a weak and herdish thing to be “good.” Being nice was just a cover for weakness. I knew too that I was capable of knowing what was good for me, but doing the opposite. Once while I was home on Christmas break from school I slept with an old lover in some strange house he had the keys to. The sheets smelled like other people's bodies. My lover was melancholy, drank beers, brooded. It made me feel uneasy, even now, because I'd known it wasn't right to go there every evening to fuck and smoke cigarettes in a stranger's bed, but I did it anyway.
Everything around me seemed suddenly lushly alive. The ceramic patterns on the walls looked like DNA chains. Madison was talking about a john who had only wanted to kiss. “And he kissed so fake,” she said, “like he thought he was a movie star.”
She turned to me and put her lips on mine, opened her mouth and let her tongue wiggle around. Her mouth tasted of melon and I felt as if I were swimming in very warm water.
“The two of you are wonderful to behold,” Habee said, patting his heart.
Madison laughed and started to tell about a time when she was little. She'd forced all the kids in her neighborhood to take communion: wine made from poison sumac berries.
Had she really wanted to kiss me or was she showing off for Habee? Even her most intimate gestures were ambiguous. She was listening to him talk now about his mother, how she never woke, sleeping with her hands palsied up and the pee trickling into the clear plastic bag beside her. “It is a shame,” he said, “that such a precious spirit has taken flight.” Then Madison told about her mother, how she'd been raped and murdered in a lot behind the local grocery store, how the guy poured lighter fluid over her and set the whole field on fire.
“Jesus,” I said. “You don't just tell a story like that.”
They both looked at me, surprised the story startled me. Habee patted me coldly, turned to Madison, who told how the police had searched for the man though he was never found. Watching Madison talk I realized her coldness and cruelty were ways, known only to herself, of feeling more strongly than others.
Shadows shifted again behind the silk divider near us. A man breathed rhythmically and I could see a pelvis swaying against the rear and back of a bent figure. The sound of skin slapping skin reminded me of the skinheads. Madison touched my arm and said, “He's agreed to show you.” Habee was waiting, with his fingers splitting his pajamas, showing me his cunt, which was wide and lovely with folds and folds of pink skin. From inside came the limp cock, tiny balls too. I thought strangely of my mother, how she walked around the house in a half-slip, how she showed me rashes on her thighs, a pimple on her breast, how there seemed no delineation between her pain and mine. I asked, “Does any of it work?” He leaned toward me, his strong smell of cinnamon and the sweet smoke of opium swirled and he said, “It all depends on what you mean.”
C h a p t e r E i g h t
IT WAS NEARLY DAWN. THE TRAFFIC LIGHT'S REDS, YELLOWS AND greens were magic in the blue half light. We left Habee's and walked through Chinatown. Madison stopped to chat with the live chickens in the cage of the poultry store, then pointed at a jade display of lovers in a variety of sexual positions. We were headed for a diner in the Tenderloin that Madison said had the best marmalade toast in San Francisco. My body felt light and the littlest details were miraculous: the store window with a row of old man's hats, the elegant way Madison flung her cigarette. The lightening sky reminded me of when I was young, before I knew the difference between living things and dead ones.
The diner was classic, white tile with Art Deco aluminum details. A sign written in longhand advertised the breakfast specials. Madison pulled the door open. Her exhaustion manifested itself as speedy strength. We took a booth near the front windows. There were a couple of drag queens at the counter eating pie and a black man two booths down with a little white mutt on his lap. I'd seen him around on his bike carrying the dog in the front basket. The waitress slapped down the plastic-covered menus, stood with her pen poised over her pad. She was thin like a boy, her netted hair resting on her head like a crown.
“Two breakfast specials,” Madison said, lighting another cigarette, “with extra jam.”
“How do you want your eggs?” the waitress asked.
“Over easy,” she said and the drag queens laughed.
She drank one cup of coffee after another, looking out the window at the steam rising from a manhole cover. I inhaled her smoke, watched the shoulders of the Mexican fry-cook stooping over the grill. She was like a man in her insistence on quiet camaraderie. Madison sipped her coffee, opened another small plastic container of cream, three more packets of sugar. There was pain in her face, but it was hard to tell if it was for her mother. It was horrible to imagine her mother, vulnerable in a flimsy flowered housedress, dragged behind the grocery store. Madison arranged her life so she'd be close to her mother, close to death. The waitress set the plates down roughly. My eggs were runny. The yokes reminded me of body fluids and the bacon scent was nauseating. I pushed my plate away. Madison cut her egg whites with her fork into splinters, then reached one up tentatively to her mouth. She concentrated entirely on eating, swallowing firmly. She sniffed her toast, emptied two containers of marmalade on the slices and took a bite. The sun was there now, pink on the flesh-tone buildings across the street. A bald man came in with a lunch bag and a newspaper.
“Is that story about your mother true?” My nerves were wasted and it upset me so much to ask that my hand trembled on the coffee cup. She seemed angry.
“I used to be like you. I went around sticking my nose in everyone's business, thinking I was a garbage pail for everyone's misery. Everything seemed so sad, too sad to bear.”
“You think compassion is a malady?”
“Everybody does,” Madison said. “Now I just try to forget myself by forcing my body into extreme situations. You may think I'm a fool, but it's the way I saved myself.”
“Did you ever ask someone for help?” I hated myself, I sounded like a goddamn television commercial.
“You mean God?” She laughed. “I know I should make peace with my past, but I can't. Therapy is for people like you, who have little problems, like divorced parents or husbands who can't get it up.”
“I don't know,” I said. “I think people can help each other.”
“Well, you probably believe in democracy too.” She lifted her yolk onto her toast.
The coffee was hitting my nerves hard. I wanted her to stay with me. I suddenly felt horribly lonely. “What I meant was, I want to help you.”
“I can't stomach this,” she said, throwing down her fork. “Why can't you just sit there quietly and watch me eat?”
* * *
I HURRIED BACK TO THE APARTMENT, LAY DOWN ON THE BED and pretended to be dead. I fell off quickly, had dreams of the dead, vivid and horrible. I opened my mouth and lizards came out. I dreamt I was walking naked in the Tenderloin with a baby made of cheese and another the size of a matchstick. To make the small one grow, I put it in warm water, but it turned blue. I tried to breast-feed it, and at first, it was amazing: the milk, the baby's adorable little mouth, but then it turned into a thick black catfish with long insect antennae. A man spoke Spanish in the next room, his voice rose until he was screaming and I opened my eyes and realized it was the phone ringing.