A Dirge for the Temporal (10 page)

Triangle

S
o I was there
and she was there and all three of us were there. So what.

  So what? So it was my birthday and she had a gun pointed directly at Tiny’s face, that’s what.

  Tiny, meantime, looked like he was about to shit his pants. There was no one else in the joint, thank God. Tiny being the bartender himself made matters a little less complicated. No witnesses, that way. Witnesses to
what
? That’s what I was wonderin’. I mean, Christ, I lived with Debbie. Had she mentioned to me she was going to pull a gun on poor Tiny? Hell, I’d no idea she even had her piece with her.

  So there’s the gun in Tiny’s face, and Tiny…well, he’s looking at me
like I know somethin’ about somethin’. I can only shrug at him and wonder
when Debbie’s going to cool it so’s I can have a damn beer. But Debbie, it seems, ain’t gonna cool it.

  “You are a mother prick, you know it, Tiny? And I’m a fucking dupe for lettin’ it go on.”

  A
fuckin’
dupe, she says. Not just any dupe but a
fuckin’
one. I’m really
troubled now because the only time Debbie ever uses that word is when she’s especially steamed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Deb.”

  “Don’t call me Deb, Tiny,” she says, sticking the nose of the revolver in his nostril.

  “What do you want from me?” he squeals. Like he ain’t no bigger than his title. Which he damned sure is—else his ass would have been kicked all over the joint fifty times and countin’ by now.

  “You know what I want.”

  “I don’t, Debbie. I truly don’t!”

  “
You
, you big gorilla. It’s you I want. Why do you think I moved in with this bum in the first place? Was to get to you, of course.”

  “Huh?” I’m not sure which one of us said it, Tiny or me. I knew this,
though: absorbin’ it was like absorbin’ a punch in the ear, the ‘verberations
rollin’ like a drum through me.

  “Why, you ask, do I need a piece to make that point,” she says to him matter-o’-factish, muzzle still in his nostril.

  His big alarmed eyes are now fixed on yours truly. “Wh-why, Debbie?” he stammers.

  “How else,” she says kinda sexy-like, bending real close, “was I gonna get your attention?” The last word was a breath. Hot, I imagined.

  Oh, but I don’t know where I got the juice to do what I did next. I’ve been in some situations, some pretty damn hardcore situations, too, but I ain’t never had a lady drop one on me like that. Not when I’ve been romancin’ her and treatin’ her right and, yeah, I ain’t ashamed to admit it—thinkin’ about marrying her. That’s the fat and skinny of it right there. I loved the girl.

  I pounced on her like a cat on a rat, five words tumblin’ through my head. I’m gonna kill the bitch. I’m gonna kill the bitch!
I’m gonna kill you, bitch!
As I seized her throat in one hand, I grabbed at the gun with the other. It went off with a muffle more’n a bang, partly ‘cause Tiny’s head suppressed the noise, partly ’cause I was in another zone, the
killing
zone, and I wasn’t hearin’ much o’ nothin’ beyond those five words inside my skull. I think I must o’ premonitioned the shot goin’ off ‘cause at that very instant my head jerked up, just in time to see Tiny’s marbles go sprayin’ across the bottles and the mirror behind the bar.

  Suddenly people were rushin’ into the room, from the back, from the bathrooms, from everywhere, it seemed, and all at once. A single word filled the air, but I was so consumed by the blood rage now, I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d wanted to. Clutching her head in both my hands, I bounced it off the cushioned edge of the bar. Dazed, she watched me lift the gun, level it, and fire.

  She dropped like a weight. Behind the spot where she’d stood,
balloons floated, mouths hung open, the word still lingered on the blood-
scented air…

 
Surprise!

The Smell of Sex

A
s India, she knew her body. She’d lived without anyone but Angela, the other woman inhabiting her body, for two decades now, and she had memorized its every blemish, its every suggestion. She knew how she appeared to men, how she affected their senses: she had the manner, the bearing and the speech of a woman skirting forty, but the softness of skin and absence of wrinkles of a girl of seventeen. She was naturally dark with hair that fell down her back in waves and eyes that spoke of exotic locales. She had taste, an elegance of dress and movement that both suited and was at odds with the manufactured ambiance of the piano bars where she spent her evenings. She possessed the sumptuousness of night, and no man, however unworldly, would ever have mistaken her for a day creature. She smelled of smoke—Angela hated it—and beneath the smoke, a hint of the perfume that Angela sold for a living.

  And under the perfume, apparently, sex.

  “Did you say…?” She stared at the man who had taken the stool beside hers, knowing she had heard him right, and that she was learning something new about herself—through the man, as always. Other than the barkeep, who read a newspaper by the impotent light intended to be synonymous with romance, and the pianist, whose icicle melody aspired to the same, they were alone. She had selected the stool at the far end of the bar, in relation to the hotel lobby, so she could be close to the mystery-lending darkness of the corner.

  “Sex,” he smiled, doing it again, taking in her aroma as if she were a wine. “You smell faintly of sex.”

  If she had been Angela, she would have tossed her drink in his face. But then Angela wouldn’t have been here, and Angela’s drink of choice had ice cream in it, which didn’t toss well.

  “You have a lot of nerve.”

  “Don’t pretend to be offended,” he said. His voice was deep, with a soothing, intoning quality like a hypnotist’s. His eyes were deeper yet, almost black, as he openly searched hers. The shadow of a beard accentuated a model’s jaw line. His nose, rather beautiful itself, contributed to a predatory look. The flare of his nostrils told him hungry. Now.

  She sipped her drink, unaroused, unimpressed. It was her game, India’s game.

  “Without lowering your eyes,” he said, “tell me what I’m wearing.”

  “Black,” she said. “You’re always wearing black. Black suit, black leather jacket, black boots, black wingtips…what difference does it make?”

  “I can tell you what you’re wearing.” He firmly held her gaze.

  “Is that what you tell the girls you find in the phone book late at night?”

  “Skin,” he said, undeterred. “And the merest layer of sweat.”

  He knew. He knew what India had been doing before she emerged from her room tonight. It wasn’t a line. He genuinely smelled it on her. She smelled his powers of perception, his acute senses, on him. He was starting to smell good.

  It was still India’s game, and she let him know it. “I carry a toy or two in my bags. It gets lonely on the road. That bitch I share a bed with is no good. I travel with Angela. She hasn’t had sex since the day her husband walked out on her twenty years ago.”

  “Why did he walk out on her?” he said.

  “She was screaming at me in the mirror. He dubbed her irremediably crazy. It was the last time she ever spoke to me. I don’t think she knows I exist anymore.”

  “A woman you share a bed with?”

  “Yes, well, I have night wings.”

  “Night wings,” he echoed admiringly. "I’ve a pair of those myself. My name is Anton.”

  “I’m India,” she said, extending her hand elegantly.

  He did not stop at kissing her hand, but pulled her to him, brushing her cheek, her neck, with his lips. A slight exhalation escaped her mouth, and she knew he smelled that too: cognac, India’s drink. She glanced up to find the bartender looking over his newspaper at her. She closed her eyes, sensually. When she opened them again, he had returned to his paper…out of boredom, embarrassment, desire, masculinity...

  “India and Angela.” His whisper was hot in her ear. “They don’t even sound like they mix. India has a delicious flavor, like the odor of her body, but Angela…”

  “Angela stinks of soap and hand lotion.”

  “The bartender, I noticed, stinks of soap and hand lotion. Maybe we should put the two together.”

  She thought how bizarre that would be, forcing Angela to let the bored, embarrassed, lustful bartender inside. How fitting for Angela, who was all of those things and didn’t even know it.

  She pushed him back, looking at him askew. “Do you know that Angela won’t even wear the perfume she sells because she doesn’t want to seem as if she’s trying to be seductive?”

  He looked at his watch. “The bar closes in twenty minutes.”

  She caught the barkeep looking at her again. Angela would be almost as attractive, almost India as she woke up to find him on top of her.

  She raised her glass. He came lazily. She doubted that would be the case when they were in the room.

~

  When no answer came after multiple knocks, India produced her card. She invited them to peruse the mini-bar while she went to see about Angela. She didn’t elaborate except to offer a shrugging comment about “that mirror fetish of hers,” after which she slipped into the bathroom, its door having been noticeably closed when they entered the room.

  Inside the cubicle she stared at herself in the glass, hand absently going to the sample bottle, more like an ampule containing the elixir of her current need. She opened the bottle and touched the perfume to her slender neck, still conscious only of her face, delicate and exotic, daring in comparison to Angela’s—though when the jets from the shower washed
away the accessories, they were one and the same. For the briefest sec
ond Angela’s face breached the surface, scaring her with its sudden power and will to do so, then it sank back into the watery pool of the reflective glass, leaving her on the lip of anger, sexual and dark, like the mask.

  When she watched her smirk twist into a grin, she knew she was still on her game. She began to talk, first in her own sexy voice, then in the reactive, weak, almost pathetic voice that she liked to put on Angela.
Again the essence of Angela momentarily bled through the veil—uninvited, though not, upon reconsideration, unwelcome. Indeed she permitted
herself the amusing notion that Angela might awaken to the night’s reality
prior to being summoned from her department store dreams. Relish our luscious fantasies.

  Ending the dialogue with an expressive “You’ve got five minutes, Angela, then I’m sending our guest in after you,” India emerged from the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

  By
guest
she referred to the bartender of course. His name was Dave—she knew from the meaningless banter in the elevator—but she wasn’t about to use it. At least Anton had the decency to don a handle for the night. Still, he had to be petted; he was, after all, the important and irresistible and superlative bartender. Accepting from Anton the cognac he had poured—her own addition to the mini-bar—she joined them at the table, sitting down on the bartender’s lap without asking for his permission.

  She placed his hand on her breast.

  “Go ahead. Caress it. It is very much like hers. Consider it a taste.”

 
He responded well. Both women wanted him—she could see the fan
tasy weaving itself in amongst the vanities dominating his features even before he clenched, rather than caressed, her breast. The pain stirred her in places already moist from the promises of the winged one who smelled sex on his victims. She thought to slap him, but figured he
would pout, or worse yet, rough handle her. She suspected this would not be to Anton's liking, hence a black mark against the mixologist even before the sport began. Anton, meanwhile, was pitted against the fuckoverhaul
of Angela’s world in the game of India’s desires. She thought to send Angela off, but no, Angela was always first choice.

  The bartender’s hand found its way beneath her form-fitting dress, groping, pinching the nipple. She felt him grow against her right cheek.

  “I’m fascinated about Angela,” Anton said, watching the movements of the bartender’s hand. “Twenty years abstinent?”

  “You wouldn’t even smell the
desire
on her,” India said.

   “Really?” he said, amused. “There is always the desire.”

  “Yeah,” grunted the barkeep, groping, pinching, rising.

   India appreciated the idiotic quality of the bartender; the simpler they were, the more damage to Angela’s big, glass, mannequin-dressed windows.

  There was a sound, enough to turn heads towards the bathroom, which was only a wall’s distance from the corridor, whence the noise had no doubt come. India played on it, rising to her feet, much to the discomfort
of the bartender, unsure whether to seize her or seize himself. She went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her again.

  “Angela!” she exclaimed, all shock. She quickly slipped out of her shoes, then her dress, then her stockings. She viewed herself naked in the mirror. The side of her right breast was red. “Angela,” she said again, softly this time, touching the spot. She washed her face, put her hair in a pineapple, peed, then emerged from the cubicle unclothed.

  Anton canted his head.

  “We’re twins,” she said, blushing.

  “Ah,” he said. “It’s a game.”

  “What do you mean?” India heard Angela in her voice, then retreating
again, like radio interference.

  “I mean there is the smell of sex on you too—Angela.”

  India did not know how to answer, so she didn’t. She sat in the bartender’s lap, whimpering, pining, widening her legs. Anton moved his chair nearer to her, leaning close as he asked, “So where is India now?”

  She was a doe in the lights of an automobile, transfixed by him. The suspicion was odd on him, unworthy of his smooth, his cool.

  The bartender, unable to contain himself any longer, suddenly grabbed her around the waist, surging to his feet. Anton got out of his way, but the table did not, India crying out in pain as her elbow caught its edge. The bartender threw her to the bed, pinning her down as he worked his pants undone. She resisted halfheartedly, watching with increasing interest as his zipper came down and the surprisingly impressive
fullness of him sprang greedily from its containment. She heard Angela catch air, she heard Angela recalling a face in the mirror that was and was not her own, she heard Angela sniff at the mingled odors of smoke and perfume and sweat, every morning’s fume as she woke from perverted dreams. She saw the aggressor through Angela’s eyes, followed almost instantaneously by Angela’s refusal to acknowledge him. She felt Angela withdraw, cursed her for the prude, coward, nun, and daughter of her mother that she was.

  As she spread her legs to him, moistly seizing his organ with her own as she accepted him eagerly into her shared body, she saw the shape of the winged one rising up behind him, a distorted silhouette beyond the frame of her starting, nameless lover. Anton’s mouth opened almost in unison with that of her driving adolescent, whose fit was bringing Angela back to the surface again, crucifix, soap, douche…all in hand.
Come on, Angie
, she thought.
Come up into the fuck with me
.

  The bartender was perspiring already from the task of keeping up his jackhammer pace. India didn’t care. She didn’t need it slow from him; his simple, clumsy inability to control himself was aphrodisiac. It was the sort of thing Angela would call disgusting, brute and savage, animal. God, wasn’t it so. His size was factoring in, massaging her most sensitive places without relent, denying her the simplest breath.

  It was she who suffered the inability now, the inability to make a berth for Angela, the inability to delay her own orgasm until Angela had accepted that this was a gift to her, the inability to cry a warning about what came.

  “
Ah, the aroma, delectable aroma of sex. How it strokes the appetite
!” issued Anton, one great claw raised, razors long and keen.

  She wanted to demand of him an explanation. How had she been led to this frenzy of the body? This abandon? But she knew it was as much
Angela’s question as her own as she gave forth like a fountain, in harmony
with her nameless lover, who spewed it all over the room, the hot red fluid of his body. Back and forth again, with a speed and ferocity that put the bartender’s aggressions to shame, the winged one slashed him to tatters and ribbons.

  With a last lurch of the upper torso, a richly dark rivulet spilled from the bartender’s mouth and he fell sideways to the sheets, leaving Angela gaping up at the beast that had been Anton.

  “You reek of it!” snarled the beast, saliva from its grinning mouth.

  Her breathing was labored, fierce, as she stared up in wondrous terror.

  “Sex!” it spat.

  She shook her head back and forth, a silent, terrified proclamation of
innocence.

  India broke the membrane, belching, “Not Angela! No! If it’s the sex or the smell of sex that attracts you—”

  “That
feeds
me!”

  “Angela can’t be what you’re looking for. It isn’t hers. She doesn’t partake
of the fruits I do.” It came out of the shaft of a well, the shaft through which India was falling.

  The beast glared down at the woman, nostrils twitching. With a long, keen talon it scraped moisture from her neck, sniffed it, now her belly, sniffed again, now between her legs.

  “It has the scent…” it said. “And yet…” It glared again. “What is your name?!”

  “Angela,” she said feebly.

  It frowned down at her, muttered something about abstinence, decades, then fretted off in the direction of the door. At the bathroom it paused, sniffing. It vanished for a moment, then reemerged with the vial of perfume.

  Tossing the bottle at Angela, it said: “Hides the stink of abstinence.”