Epiphany Jones (11 page)

‘Hey, can I borrow that knife? You can pull it from my stomach
when I’ve stopped breathing,’ would be the logical thing to say. Instead, with my face buried in my hands, I squeeze out, ‘I’m
so sorry
–’

‘People never start with the intention of doing bad things, Jerry,’ she interrupts. ‘They start with small things, then it snowballs.’

Even with my eyes shut and my hands covering my face I can feel her looking at me. I bend forward, head buried into the seatback. Someone kill me.

‘Before they know it, the bad things aren’t bad at all; they’re just normal. They’re just life,’ she’s saying. I feel her green gaze burrowing a hole into the side of my head, but I can’t bring myself to face her. ‘Don’t let your demons snowball, Jerry. We all still have a choice in what we do.’

T
he ceiling ripples like the floor of an ocean. The sounds of my body hitting the tub echo under the surface. The madness is all above. But my peace is interrupted by a splash over my stomach. I break the surface, sucking a gulp of air, to find a soccer ball floating in the bathtub with me. I hop onto the bathroom’s cracked, tiled floor and throw a towel around my waist. I spin the ball in the palm of my hand. Water sprays from it like one of those pinwheel sparklers you light on the Fourth of July.

A little voice shouts, ‘
Triste
, Jerry!’ Ana Lucia is at the bathroom window. She’s got a big grin that looks especially white because her face is covered in dust and sweat from playing in the street under the midday sun. I smile and hand her the ball. She says something I can’t understand.

‘No problem,’ I say and watch Ana run towards the other kids as their game continues. I fill a little cup with water and swallow one of my 486s. In the mirror the cut on my neck from Epiphany’s blade is nothing but a small pink line now. We’ve been in Ensenada for almost a week. The first thing we did when we got here was to buy clothes from a street market. The My Little Pony T-shirt I was wearing was attracting the wrong kind of stares from wrong-looking guys. Then we went to a store and stocked up on food. When Epiphany paid I saw that she must have gotten at least a thousand dollars for my father’s watch. I asked if we should exchange it, but Epiphany said dollars go further here. Then she handed me fifty like it was pocket money.

It took her less than two hours to rent the place we’re in. She found
a guy, handed him some cash, and then we had it. It’s not great, but it’s a lot better than the shithole we were squatting in in Chicago. The roof is made of tin siding that makes a pleasant metallic sound when it rains. It’s got a kitchen and bath and the bedroom has a bed and the living room has a few good-sized chairs where Epiphany usually curls up to sleep.

After what happened on the bus I didn’t sleep for the remainder of the trip. I was so busy feeling humiliated that I didn’t even worry about the passports when we came to the border. Turns out they were pretty much for nothing anyway. The customs officer that boarded our bus barely glanced at them. If you’re white and American, Mexicans welcome you and your money with open arms.

When we arrived in Ensenada I asked for the videotape but Epiphany said I couldn’t have it until she found whoever it is she’s looking for here. I was too tired, still too ashamed to argue. When I woke the next morning she was gone. She didn’t return until late that night. Since then, she’s been in and out.

She doesn’t seem as pressed for time here as she was in Chicago. And I don’t see her much, which is a good thing. The horror of knowing she saw me masturbate to her still mortifies me. But really, she should have taken it as a compliment. No one masturbates to ugly chicks. If someone’s masturbating to you it’s like you’ve won a beauty contest.

At first I was sure Epiphany was avoiding me because of what happened, but then I began noticing how rough she looked when she came home – one time it even looked like she’d been attacked. Her clothes were covered in dirt and her arm had a long, bleeding scratch running the length of it. I asked her about it, but she waved me off saying she needed sleep. That night I heard her cry.

Maybe a saner person would keep pressing her, but I can’t risk her getting angry and destroying the videotape – wherever it is. I already fucked up over the masturbation thing and I’m pretty sure Epiphany doesn’t have a three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule. It’s gotta be two, at most. And after that she probably kills you.

Besides, I’m feeling better than I have in a long time. I know that’s
a weird thing to say considering my situation, but it’s from being in a place where you can’t read or speak the language. You feel better about yourself. It’s because when you walk down the street you can’t understand what anything says. The advertisements that tell you you’re ugly because you don’t use
this
whitening toothpaste or you’re unlovable because you don’t drive
that
kind of car can’t penetrate your mind. The horror stories on the news mean nothing to you. With no TV or internet you spend your time thinking, walking, discovering. And cleaning. Cleaning has become a substitute hobby for me. It’s therapeutic. When I’m scrubbing an oven, my mind is focused. When I’m scrubbing an oven, I manage to avoid thinking about my mom and Roland and being a wanted murderer.

And it’s not that she’s gotten any nicer, for the most part she ignores me (when I ask where she’s going, her answer is always, ‘
Out
’), but being with Epiphany – with a real live person – has made me feel like I almost have a normal relationship. Almost.

Last night – I don’t know, maybe I was coming on
too
strong. Maybe I was trying to be too nice because I wanted to show her I wasn’t really a sicko who jerks off to people while they sleep. I told her she looked like she’d lost weight. Girls like to hear that, right? And that wasn’t the Stockholm syndrome talking. She does look thinner, she needs to slow down and take time to eat. So I offered to cook dinner.

‘What do you think?’

‘I need to go out,’ she said, throwing on her hoodie.

‘Well, I’ll have dinner waiting when you get home,’ I said as the door closed behind her. In hindsight I probably sounded too desperate.

I spent the evening chopping vegetables, cooking pasta, grating cheese. I was excited at the prospect of having dinner with another person. The food was cooked; I set the table and waited.

And waited.

It was almost four this morning when she returned. She didn’t even say anything; she just curled up on a chair in the living room and went to sleep.

There’s a light rapping sound. ‘Adios, Jerry!’ Ana Lucia screeches
when I open the screen door. She always makes sure to say goodbye after the game ends. This all started a few days ago when the soccer ball came through the bathroom window the first time. I was annoyed when she sheepishly came to retrieve it. The first thing I said was, ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re saying, kid.’ But when she smiled it reminded me of Emma’s smile. Then she pointed to herself and said ‘Ana Lucia’ and then pointed to me and I said, ‘What?’

Then she pointed at me again and I said, ‘Oh. Jerry.’

‘Adios, Jerry!’ she says again as she turns to go, but I shout after her. ‘Ana, wait!’ And I grab a large chopping knife and split an apple in two.

‘You need to keep your strength up after such a long game,’ I find myself saying, handing her the halves of the apple. And the thing she does next just destroys me. She runs up to me and wraps her arms around my waist and hugs me as hard as she can.

But when I look down and pat her head, I see Emma. Emma’s hugging me. She’s nine years old and from the way she looks I can tell she has the cancer. Her thin, pale arms wrap around my waist and her big brown eyes meet mine. My eyes sting as I hold my dead sister again. I’m so sorry, Emma.

Emma, she releases me and runs out the door. The absence of her body leaves me feeling cold. Always cold. When she’s halfway up the street, she shouts, ‘Bye, Jerry!’ and then smiles and runs. I want to tell Emma not to go. To tell her I’m lost without her; that I’m not a real person anymore. But when I wipe my tears away and open my eyes again, it’s Ana Lucia I see trailing after her friends.

B
efore I left I tried focusing on cleaning the oven, but with each scrub Emma burned more and more into my mind. It felt like I was suffocating. I needed endorphins. So I substituted the scrubbing with rubbing. I tried to focus on Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christina Aguilera, Jordan Seabring, but I couldn’t hold their images in my mind. I gave up and decided to go for a walk. I ended up at this bar for a drink to calm myself. It’s a shithole, but the sign on the window said, ‘
ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE
’.

The Mexican bartender is speaking to some Australians. They’re talking about a girls’ orphanage here in town that burned down the other night.

‘It is the talk of the city,’ the bartender says, as the drunk Australians nod in sympathy. ‘Over thirty girls lost their home. None were killed, thank the Lord Jesus Christ, but now they will have to be separated and sent to orphanages in other cities. No one place has the room to take all of them. It is like they are losing their families again. It is a tragedy.’

‘Oi, right!’ one of the drunk Australians says. ‘A tragedy!’

I swirl the rum in my glass. It’s a trip to Disneyland compared to my life.

Above the bar a TV plays an American station. A reality show is on.
Keeping Up with the whoever
. It’s the first English-language show I’ve seen since the bus.

The thing about American television shows is that most of them are designed to be aspirational programming. That’s a term coined by Hollywood in the 1980s. Aspirational programs are shows that dangle
a carrot in front of the audience. They show us things we aspire to have one day: beautiful friends, money, cars, exciting jobs, exotic trips.

Think:
Gossip Girl
.

Think:
Sex in the City
.

Think: any stupid reality show about rich, beautiful people who are famous for doing nothing.

The reason aspirational programming is so popular is because viewers actually believe that one day they too will live lives just as exciting, sexy, loving, or rich as those of the characters on their television screens. It’s just how we’re wired; the desire that overrides reason.

But aspirational programming has a side-effect. The older you get, the more you watch, the more you realise that, no, your shitty life will never be as good as the people you are watching. It’s constant, new dissatisfaction. This realisation eventually leads to depression because those aspirational shows you see, they aren’t showing you what you could have, they’re showing you what you’ll never have.

And if you’re me, seeing a show like this for the first time in weeks – after thinking about your dead sister, after getting shot down by the woman who’s destroyed your life, and after losing your family and your job – well, it’s an eye-opener to how silly you’ve been acting since a crazy lady kidnapped you, Stockholm syndrome or not.

It reminds you of everything you’ve lost.

And it makes you angry.

I’ve been such a fool pretending my situation has somehow improved in this little shitty town. I have forty dollars to my name. (Less. The drink cost me three.) I’ve been blackmailed. I have no home. No job. No proof of anything. Even the passport in my pocket is fake.

But what in my life isn’t? Donald told the detectives that everyone at the museum knows I made up my girlfriends. On the surface they all pretended to be my friends, but behind my back they laughed. And maybe I did lie about Harriett, but they don’t know what I’ve been through. And Mom, that look on her face – the shock and disappointment; the
disgust
– when she thought I killed Roland. The way she exiled me from her house, in an instant! Did she ever love me at all?

I’m pathetic; cleaning house, trying to win Epiphany’s approval. Who gives a fuck if I jerked off to her? Who cares if it
disturbs
her? After all she’s done, she deserves much worse.

The thing about anger: it gives you the clarity to examine your situation in new light; to look at things from a new, hyperaware perspective.

And maybe, just maybe, it gives you the drive to do something about it.

I’
m surprised to find Epiphany home when I return. She’s sitting at the little kitchen table with her hands folded. Her head is tilted and her lips are slowly moving.

You faker
.

Her lips stop and she makes the sign of the cross.

You Joan of Arc wannabe.

‘Talking to God?’ I say.

‘Praying,’ she says, glancing at me before getting up and walking past me.

‘PAY ATTENTION TO ME!’ I scream. Epiphany’s so startled she almost trips over her feet. Blood thunders in my head. She turns to face me and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen shock on her face. ‘I want the fucking tape and I want out.’ My voice cracks and every part of my body shudders like I’m a cornered animal.

‘Soon,’ she says.

‘Soon, bullshit!’ I tremble. ‘It’s been a week. What the fuck are we doing here? I sit around doing dick all day while you’re out doing God knows what.’ My heart feels like it’s vibrating. ‘Where the fuck do you go? What the hell are you doing? Are you working the streets?
Epiphany
? Is that your fucking hooker’s name?’

Her face goes cross. ‘I don’t like it when you swear, Jerry.’

And I literally spit on her. I spit on her and she recoils as it lands below her eye. ‘Tough fucking shit, baby. I don’t like it when you kill
my fucking friends and frame me for their fucking murder,’ I yell. ‘So fuck what you don’t like, fuck your voices, and fuck your God too.’

Before I know it I’m staggering backwards from the force of her slap. A slap! Like we’re in a black-and-white gangster movie from the thirties! She presses me against the wall and slaps me again. ‘Get the fuck off me, you crazy whore,’ I shout as she raises her hand again, and I push hard and she’s knocked against the kitchen counter.

Epiphany lets out a cry and brings her hand to her face. Behind her, the knife I used to slice Ana Lucia’s apple has blood on it.

I take a deep breath. ‘I didn’t mean for that to happen,’ I say.

Epiphany, she sucks the meaty part of her palm, looks at it, and then sucks it some more.

I say, ‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine,’ she says and heads for the door without looking back.

‘Wait, come on. I didn’t mean for that to happen,’ I say. ‘Come on, where are you going?’

‘To Momma’s,’ she says and slams the door.

Momma’s?

Is that where she’s been going all this time? Did she bring me all this way for a family reunion? The thought that Epiphany even has parents seems alien. It’s easier to believe that she just hatched from an egg in a mental institution somewhere.

In the sink I wash her blood from the knife. Thoughts cloud my mind. That’s when it hits me: who else could she have mailed it to? Her mom has the videotape.

I bolt out the door, hoping I’m not too late. I run south, glancing down all the little side streets. I catch Epiphany making a left on to a busy avenue a hundred feet in front of me. I sprint to catch up with her but pause when I reach the intersection. I can’t let her see me. I only need to find where her mom lives. When Epiphany returns and goes to bed tonight, I’ll sneak out and break into her mom’s house. I’ll get the tape and be done with all this.

Epiphany walks past a fruit-and-vegetable stand, where she catches a well-built man’s attention. He’s a good six inches taller than anyone
else on the street. He wears a black leather jacket and has thick, dark hair and olive skin. He eyes Epiphany’s hips as she passes.

And I think:
Trust me. She’s not worth it
.

Epiphany turns around and the man in the leather jacket turns away. He grabs a tomato and squeezes it, hoping he hasn’t been caught staring. She glances in my direction then abruptly turns down a side street. But as I pick up my pace my foot lands on something slippery in front of the produce stand and I skid into someone before crashing to the ground.

‘Whoa! Slow down, friend,’ a man says in an Italian accent. It’s the guy who was checking out Epiphany’s ass. He offers me his hand, which I take, after peeling a flattened tomato from the sole of my shoe.

‘Really sorry,’ I say as he helps me up.

‘No problem,’ he smiles. ‘Just be careful, OK? Don’t want to get hurt.’

The Italian notices that I keep glancing towards the street that Epiphany’s turned down. The last thing I need is a guy thinking that busting a girl’s stalker is his in with her. ‘Sorry again,’ I say as I start shuffling away. ‘Late for a – late for work.’

I dart around the corner. There aren’t many places to hide. All the shops’ doors are shuttered. There are no alleys she could have ducked down. I jog to the end of the street where it crosses another even smaller street. Twenty more minutes of turning down countless streets and alleyways and it’s become dark. I’m completely lost.

I’ve obviously gone from the bad part of town to the worst. Junkies are slumped in the shadows of alleys. Drunken men ramble incoherently. I’m relieved when I recognise a small bar on the corner. It looks like the one I was at earlier, but when I pass it it’s not the same. On the next street a man in a doorway says something.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I don’t speak Spanish.’

‘Looking for woman?’ he asks in broken English.

‘Umm, yeah,’ I say. ‘She’s pale, about five-six, black hair.’

‘Good, good!’ The man walks towards me and laughs. He slaps me on the back and shouts, ‘I have blue! Katia!’

From the doorway the man was standing in a woman appears. She wears a yellow T-shirt and little green panties. Her hair is bright blue – a really bad dye job. She’s all smiles.

‘That’s not her,’ I say.

‘For you: three hundred fifty pesos. Twenty minutes.’ The man smiles. The girl bites her lower lip seductively. I gaze down the street. There are men in almost every doorway and girls in almost every window. The blue-haired girl’s eyes sparkle as she glances towards my crotch.

‘Sorry, wrong girl,’ I say.

‘Two-fifty pesos!’ the man shouts as I walk away.

I continue down the street, carefully avoiding the men who roam like zombies, silently moving from one window to the next, trying to decide what girl to taste. A man on the corner mumbles, ‘
Coke? Guns? What you need?’
and I wonder where I am in relation to the apartment.

That’s when I notice her.

Behind a plate-glass window is a virtual lookalike of Natalie Portman. Her face, her eyes, even the width of her shoulders – she’s an exact match. I had this six-month stretch where I would only jerk off to images of Portman. This was before I knew who Jordan Seabring was. I had well over a thousand Portman fakes on my computer in every conceivable style and position: missionary, doggy, drill, bondage, rape, you name it. She just did it for me.

A large black man approaches me. He’s shirtless and looks like he could give the Incredible Hulk a beating. ‘Beauty, isn’t she?’ he says in a Jamaican accent. The Portman clone licks her lips. ‘Rough day?’ the Jamaican says sympathetically. ‘Come in an’ release that stress.’

The clone, she’s wearing white sparkly boots and a short, pink latex skirt that she’s slowly sliding her fingers into. Her dark nipples show through her thin, white top. She fucks me with her eyes.

‘For you,’ the Jamaican says, just like we’re old buddies, ‘two hundred pesos for the lay. One hundred pesos each for anything more
adventurous
.’

The clone, she pinches her nipples. ‘I only have dollars,’ I find myself saying.

I’m taken down a long, dimly lit corridor. At the end there’s a crack of light spilling from the gap under the door where the clone entered to ‘get ready’.

The Jamaican lays down some ground rules. ‘Remember, twenty dollars for anything beyond a fuck. She’ll tell me what you did, so don’t lie to me.’ His muscles ripple. ‘I don’t like liars.’

Salesmen are never as nice after you hand over the cash.

‘When you’re done, you leave this door.’ His red, cracked eyes glare. ‘You come back down the hallway an’ go out the front where we came in. It’s the only way out. She’ll tell me whatever extra you owe me. If you fuck without a rubber, it’s an extra twenty-five no matter what.’

Inside the girl is waiting. I glance at her before turning around to close the door. Taking a deep breath I turn back and give my best friendly smile. The Natalie Portman clone, she sits on a bed. It’s small. A single. The sheets are stained brown and red in some places. I tell myself that’s just the design.

‘Hi, I’m Jerry,’ I say, like we’re on a blind date. She doesn’t reply.

The clone starts removing her boots. I don’t know if it’s normal to stare, so just in case I pretend to find the room really interesting. There’s a small sink in the corner with a dirty bar of soap. At the end of the bed there’s a nightstand with a bowl of condoms sitting next to a little, pink lamp. On the mantel above a walled-up fireplace are various trinkets: bracelets, perfume, eyeliner, blush, panties, handcuffs, a dildo. The mirror has vertical lines drawn in lipstick. They’re grouped into fives. The count reads thirty-two. The window is covered in black paint with bars on the inside.