Blood Music (22 page)

“Let me through, you bleached-out Philistines.” The young man was dressed in a black T-shirt (“I'm With the Faggot”) and his eyes were heavily made up. His hair was several shades of blond; it was long and a little stringy. “Felix,” he said, leaning to kiss the air by Felix's cheek. “Pleased to meet you,” to John, with what seemed to be involuntary sexual emphasis. He looked John up and down and John looked him up and down.

“Yeah?” John said in a friendly way. He had finished his drink and he was going home now.

“You know,” Felix said with exasperation, “you really could—I swear to God, Em, you've got the manners of a junkyard dog. What do you want? Our visitor is grieving here.” John apparently belonged exclusively to him.

“I've got some important information for our visitor, if you don't mind.” John found himself wondering if it was really Em, or just M, like the movie.

“What important information, Miss Sissy Pants?”

“You like my pants well enough. Well, Mister White Bread, I really do have news for you. I have a friend, her name is Angel—”

“Is it Em or M?”

“What? Oh, M. Just M.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to hear it or don't you?”

John wanted to go home. “Shoot,” he said.

“Angel—”

“Oh, no, not that crackheaded little pussy.”

“Angel! That girl sure been flying, I tell you—” Again a little ripple went through the crowd. John waited for the eyes to settle back. At least this was more interesting than the MTV over the bar. A woman. He hadn't expected that.

“Yes, Angel. And she looks like one, too. I know she's not the brightest light on Broadway—”

“She sure no gyropsysicist,” Felix put in.

“—but she sees what she sees. And she told me she saw the Symphony Slasher a couple of months ago.”

Derision leapt from mouth to mouth. Angel was addlepated, Angel was a druggie and a fool. And a voice saying, “Damn, man, she just different from you all. She got a poet's soul.”

“She's something, I tell you,” said M. “But I saw her. And she's got a busted cheekbone. Seems she fooled a certain client of hers just a little too well, if you know what I mean, and when he saw the beef he just went apeshit.”

John didn't know exactly what he was talking about. Felix leaned over and said, “This dude thought she was a Genny,” and John nodded, mystified.

“So, anyway, this guy just beat the living—well, we have ladies present, I won't say. But he kept saying something about who he was or something, and Angel swears this is the guy in the poster.”

Once more there was a great deal to be said around the room. Angel wouldn't recognize her mother's tittie. Angel
wishes
she could fool a straight man. And the same voice saying, “You just don't understand her. She different from you all.” A lot of things John didn't quite understand. “Where is this Angel?” he asked M.

“She works nights. Up in the meat district.” M put an emphasis on “meat”; he seemed equally incapable of not making a joke or of knowing he had made one.

“She's a hustler,” Felix leaned over to whisper helpfully.

A prostitute. Of course. “Got it,” John whispered back. “How can I find her?” he asked M.

“Just walk up the block, handsome,” a voice sang out, “and she be sure to find
you.
”

“Felix, get me out of this,” John whispered.

“Now, you all lay off the man and just tell him what he need to know.” Which they did, eventually, and John had another drink and didn't pay for it, and when he finally found himself alone outside the door he thought that he would miss them all, and that he was glad to be an anecdote in the memory of that bar.

T
he concrete island at the middle of the intersection looked like an oasis of light. There were bloodstains in the gutter. There were no trees; there were warehouses and traffic and the dark sky above low roofs. He had passed from the cool, leafy darkness of Madeleine's neighborhood out into the barren meat-packing district.

John had just left Eenie Meenie but already it seemed like a long time ago. He stood hidden in shadow at the corner. The concrete island in front of him was alive with movement, furtive, flamboyant, bizarre. Like a dung heap, or a stage. There was a woman—was it a woman? Tall, dressed in gold lamé, Elvis in stiletto heels. A pair of women who really were, arguing over something on the ground next to them. A purse? A small dead body? They circled like dainty middle-weights. Farther up the block another transvestite talked earnestly with a casting-call drug dealer, all Rolex and Stiff Stuff. John stood in shadow and knew he was the alien here.

A car slowed up the block and a woman leaned into the front window as casually as a housewife leans over a neighbor's wall. The mouth costs so much, the hand this amount. How are the kids getting on at school? You really want to party it'll cost you—this—but no kissing.

The woman opened the door of the car and stepped into oblivion. Tomorrow she might be a rumor—last seen getting into a green Acura sedan, last year's model. Anything strange about the car? No. The driver? Was there a driver? If he had any face at all we didn't notice it.

They open the door to death a dozen times a night and nothing happens; no dark angel rustles overhead, no alien wind disturbs their hair as they bend over their flaccid, sticky bread and butter in the front seat next to the Styrofoam coffee cup, yesterday's paper, and the little pile of change. She would be back in fifteen minutes. She wouldn't even have to rearrange her skirt.

John walked up the dark street toward the hookers under the streetlight. “Want a date?” A voice so young and soft he half expected to see Cheryl's scrubbed face; instead he saw black skin, improbably arched eyebrows, impossibly yellow hair.

“A date,” she said patiently.

“Oh,” John said stupidly. She stood regarding him from the shadows of a loading dock, her red lips a winking beacon on a rocky shore. “I'm looking for a man,” said John.

“No offense taken,” she said affably. “Hey, Twinkie, I got a live one for you!”

“No, I—” Once again John stood and let himself be caught up in the comic possibilities of the moment. An enormous transvestite was heading for him. John felt as he watched the transvestite approach that he was the one on display, ripe fruit on a counter in the hot sun; he would be felt and squeezed.

“This more like what you're looking for?” asked the peroxide whore agreeably. The transvestite was an Amazon. Black leather bra, black skirt up to here, a Nile of thigh: all the semen of every man she'd ever been with could run down that expanse of thigh with room to spare on both banks. I wouldn't even make a mouthful, John found himself thinking idiotically.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “I'm not really in the market.” This person in false eyelashes and four-inch heels could easily tear him in two—not even a morsel.

“He said a man,” explained the blond whore.

“Yes. I'm sorry. I'm trying to find a man—a specific man—and I was told somebody here might have seen him. Might know him. Actually,” to the transvestite, barreling through now as though this were not at all strange to him, these people, this scene—“I don't think you'd know who I mean.” Two pairs of eyes looked at him but he knew they had already gone on to other things in their minds: that one on the corner, a shower would feel good, the light in the kitchen as the sun comes up. The blonde had already forgotten him; she was digging in her bag for a cigarette.

“He killed my sister,” John blurted out, and he saw himself come to life in their eyes; he saw himself appear. A car pulled up alongside them, the driver leaning out over the sidewalk; the transvestite impatiently waved him on.
The Slasher killed his sister.

“The Slasher?” the transvestite asked. His lips were wet. John was wrong, he was no more real than he had been before he spoke. This was something that was only happening to these people here,
then he said he was looking for the man who killed his sister and I just
knew
he meant the Slasher.

“Yes,” said John. “Somebody told me somebody here had maybe seen him.” The words were nonsense in his mouth. Cheryl could never have any reality here. John felt himself fading away like the Cheshire Cat, and Cheryl had never lived, not here on these streets where blood ran in the gutters.

“The cops've been up here,” said the blonde, “twice. Wanting to know if there've been any weirdos.” She laughed; she held a match up to the cigarette while she laughed. “Weirdos. We knew what they meant. Johns who like the rough stuff.”

“Hell,” said the transvestite. Twinkie. “We got people here
specialize
in the rough stuff.”

“And the second time they got this picture and they say anybody around here ever look like that.” The blonde took a deep drag on her cigarette and looked at her nails: Dragon Red.
And then I told him all about how the cops come up here rousting us, have we ever seen the Slasher.

“Did you?” asked John.

“Did—oh, hell, yes. Six or seven guys. And weirdos too. But not what they're looking for. I mean, one guy's got the foxy nose, but he doesn't like blondes. And another one has the eyes but he's too old. One likes blondes but he likes 'em dark like me, you know? The rough ones, we got a Spanish guy's crazy, he likes to choke the girls. Won't none of us get in his car no more. But he's Spanish. And they say they been looking for a dark van, it's got—I forget. They ain't been telling this to the papers or anything, they don't want him to change cars or anything like that. A dark van with something about the front—with paint or something on the front—on the door.”

“Tape,” said Twinkie.

“Yeah, right, like he was taping over a business name. I remember. But I don't know, we see a lot here, you know?” Silence for a moment, smoke, and John thought that they would just dissipate like rain—or he would. They would refocus their eyes and he would be gone.

“There was one got hurt bad,” Twinkie said, “but's she's not a Genny so the cops didn't care. But she told me she thought it was the Slasher did her. Fuck the cops, they don't think she's woman enough for the Slasher. They didn't even want to talk to her.”

“She's not a—?”

“A Genny. A genetic woman. Angel. Says he thought she was a woman and when he found out she wasn't he just went apeshit—you should pardon. Broke her cheekbone.”

“That was the name I was told. Angel.” Angel was not a woman. It was a waste of time, then. “I don't think I—”

“She's around here somewhere. Listen, I'll show you. It's probably not the guy, I mean Angel isn't even blond. But your sister and all.”

“How did your sister die?” asked the blonde. She was wreathed in smoke like the Caterpillar; John half expected her to suddenly point her hookah and say, “But
whooooo
are
yooooou?
” To which he could only reply, like Alice, “Well, you see, I don't rightly know, I've been so many people lately.” Angel was not a woman, and he was talking to these people for nothing, and Cheryl wasn't even dead here, she was just a name in a newspaper. The blonde was looking at him.

“I mean, which one was she?”

He had been asked the question so many times just tonight that he had stopped caring. “Cheryl. Cheryl Nassent.”

“What month?” Her thoughtlessness was actually invigorating; there was no callousness here, only a healthy animal curiosity; he imagined she was as relentless about nail polish, or lottery numbers. With just the same satisfaction about the mouth.

“Last week of April.”

“Last week of April. Oh, that was a bad one.” Suddenly she stuck out her hand. “My name's Dixie—really. That's my real name, Dixie. This is Twinkie. We'll do what we can. Scum is scum.” John felt a ridiculous urge to cry, and he knew that it would not be considered ridiculous here to give in to it. Twinkie took his arm with taloned fingers.

They walked up the block; Twinkie walked as though he were on a high-fashion runway, and Dixie never lifted her feet off the ground. John could imagine eyes looking at them from every empty window. He had lost control of the night, and he was willing to go anywhere.

At the top of the block, in a pool of shadow, a slim form swayed against a brick wall. Twinkie's heels and Dixie's mules made a loud, uneven clattering noise, like the echo of hoofbeats; the slim form turned a languid neck toward the approaching sound. John's breath caught in his mouth at the sight of the pale face. The figure raised a hand to guard the throat, and Dixie said, “Hey, Angel,” softly, as though Angel were a kitten, and John stopped, so as not to frighten her. The boy's eyes were preternaturally bright without giving the impression of seeing anything at all. When Twinkie bent to kiss her cheek his big back obscured the flamelike face.

Twinkie and Dixie spoke among themselves for a moment; when they turned away from Angel his face dissolved into confusion. “Tell this guy what you told us about the Slasher,” Dixie said encouragingly; “His sister was one of the girls the bastard got.” She tilted her head a little, shrugged her shoulders just a little, for John, and leaned forward and said, “She don't know what she's talking about. I mean, she don't lie but she don't know, either. Good luck.” And she unexpectedly kissed John's cheek and was gone. He could hear Twinkie's unself-conscious laughter moving up the street. Then he turned toward the boy.

Angel stood looking beyond him, toward the unseen river. He seemed completely unaware of him. “Angel?” John said. The boy gave no indication of having heard. “Angel, I have to talk to you. I have to find out about the man you say hurt you. It's very important to me—”