Goldenland Past Dark (24 page)

Damon Fain, excitable, pink, and plump as a pork sausage
, walked with a prancing gait and squeezed his moist hands together whenever he cried out the names of surgical procedures in his high, thin voice. He was first in his class at medical school and had once been the spelling bee champion of the state of Indiana, two facts he never failed to mention in quick succession. The morning after he rubbed a strong-smelling, pale blue cream all over the crackled expanse of Nepenthe’s naked body, she woke up feeling itchy, guilty, and more than a little pissed off.

She reflected that she had not been the greatest judge of character in Webern’s absence. First she’d gone with Venus de Milo to that party thrown by Killer McVeigh from the motorcycle cage; now she’d allowed a piggy little man from South Bend to touch her all over without so much as asking for his medical license. Jesus God. She could read all the Anaïs Nin she wanted, but obviously that didn’t stop her from being naïve as hell. Who was Damon Fain anyway? Not a dermatologist, most likely. Maybe he was some kind of psycho pervert who got off on smearing poison creams on sideshow girls. Later in the day she’d go blind, or crazy. Her brains would liquefy and he’d come back to kidnap her and sign her up for some sex slave ring. Yeah right. She needed to stop flattering herself.

Nepenthe rolled out of bed and groped around on the floor for her cigarette case. She was wearing her pink robe, but, much to her disgust, the inside was now streaked with greyish-blue grease from her skin. She shucked it off and, naked, opened her cigarette case, which promptly slipped from her oily fingers onto the floor. So disgusting. This was worse than passing out in a frat house and waking up with your hand inside a raw chicken—something that had happened to a cousin of Venus’s once, if that tramp was to be believed. Already Nepenthe was blaming Venus for what had happened the night before. She reached for a green clove, then reconsidered and took out a banana stick instead. This was all getting way too weird for her. She needed to mellow out—way out.

Nepenthe sat down on the couch, and, smoking the jay, leafed through the already-yellowing pages of the underground newspaper she’d bought two towns back. It was called
Mindfücke
, and although it wasn’t quite as good as
L’Enrage
or
The Druid Free Press
, it still had some pretty trippy poems and an interesting opinions page. Nepenthe started reading a piece about how Lyndon Johnson and his team of hairy-knuckled flunkies had planned to take out JFK with silent air-powered shoe guns until J. Edgar Hoover got to him first, but as she smoked, the article began to merge with the one in the adjacent column, about how drug cops—“the Man’s man”—had been digging through Arlo Guthrie’s fan mail for leads. Next to that was a political cartoon of an unrecognizably caricatured general hugging a fish. She ended up just staring at the boxcar ceiling to get a sense of reality back. The world was fucked, young men were exploding, and her legs really itched. Maybe she should just go back to bed.

The whole situation with Damon Fain had started the night before, right before the sideshow closed up and the real circus under the big top began. Nepenthe had been terminally bored, as usual; she and Venus de Milo had been drinking Singapore Slings off and on between performances since three o’clock in the afternoon, so she was pretty soused, too. Damon Fain had come in with the last group. He’d stood in the back, but when everyone else cleared out of Nepenthe’s partitioned-off stage to go see “Tiny” Tina and Rhonda, the fat ladies next door, he’d lingered behind. Producing a jeweler’s eyepiece from the pocket of his seersucker suit, he introduced himself as “Damon Fain, MD,” and asked if he could take a closer look at her scales.

“Whatever tickles your pickle,” Venus giggled, hopping from behind the curtain that separated their stages with a near-empty pitcher of Slings gripped in one pedicured foot. “We’ll brush your teeth for a dollar. And we’ll floss ’em for three.”

“Can she speak?” asked Damon Fain while he bent over Nepenthe’s shoulder blades, magnifier securely in place.

“Of course I can, you fascist quack. Get your filthy shoes off my Spanish moss.” Nepenthe had an elaborate set, complete with vines and an enormous artificial alligator made of foam rubber and latex paint. Earlier in the evening, she’d sat on the alligator’s back sidesaddle like she was riding a pony, but now she was stretched out on it facedown. She sat up and noticed, with a mixture of satisfaction and irritation, that Damon Fain recoiled when he saw the scales also covered her face. Nepenthe thought of the sharp-tongued heroines from old caper pictures. She added, “And if you try anything funny—I can scream, too.”

“Oh. Well—” was all the good doctor could say.

Damon Fain took his time staring at her back; he also looked at her scalp, her legs, and the skin between her toes.

“They aren’t webbed, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Nepenthe yawned. “I’m a lizard, not a goddamn mermaid. Venus, can you pour me another drink?”

“How long have you suffered from this?” asked Damon Fain.

“I don’t call it suffering as long as I’m getting paid.”

“It’s hard for a girl to make it in the world.” Venus placed a seductive foot on Damon Fain’s shoulder.

Nepenthe looked away. If Venus hadn’t started turning tricks yet, it wasn’t because she was too subtle. Not that Nepenthe could really blame her for her desperation. Since Webern had left, Nepenthe had tried to picture what her own life would be if he never came back, and it looked pretty lonely—days at the sideshow, nights watching local girls do the twist with the motorbike riders—a lot of pineapple-flavoured drinks and a progressively messier boxcar. And now a strange fat finger probing the scales behind her ear. After a few months of this, a sweaty fumble behind the Tilt-a-Whirl wouldn’t sound so bad—not that anyone would ask her.

It was funny: before Webern left, she had this idea that he was holding her back, keeping her from being part of the new generation she read about on record sleeves and in the rock-and-roll magazines she sought out on their trips into town. But now that he was gone, she realized that without him in her life, she’d be a total recluse—a virgin in a beekeeper’s suit. When the signs for concerts and be-ins said, “FREAKS WELCOME,” she wasn’t the kind they meant.

“Listen, pal,” Nepenthe said, leaning over to take her cigarette case out of the fake alligator’s mouth. “Let’s cut to the chase. What can we do for you here?”

Damon Fain cleared his throat. “I guess,” he said, “I’m more interested—heh heh—in what I can do for you.”

“Please. Enlighten us, Herr Doktor.”

“I’m an expert in rare conditions of the skin.” He pressed his hands together. “Scleredema—Vitiligo—Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”

Nepenthe lit a clove. His words reminded her of the abracadabra Dr. Show used to intone before performing one of his magic tricks.

“So which one have I got?” she asked, taking a new Singapore Sling from Venus’s outstretched foot. Her friend’s long toes uncurled from the glass.

“It looks like lamellar ichthyosis—but not a classic case, especially if you weren’t born with it. I wouldn’t presume to diagnose without a complete medical workup.”

“Well, you’re not going to get a—‘complete workup.’” Nepenthe exhaled; her smoke broke in waves on Damon’s face. Venus giggled. “So I don’t see what you can do for me.”

“Just because I haven’t made a conclusive diagnosis doesn’t mean I can’t treat the symptoms. Wait.” Damon Fain hopped down from the stage and trotted over to a corner of the sideshow tent, where he’d parked an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. Jesus God. He had all the accoutrements, that was for sure. Which, if anything, could be more evidence that he was a phony. Nepenthe half expected him to put on an inflatable stethoscope and squeal, “Let’s play doctor!” but when he opened the case, she saw it was actually full of jars with prescription labels glued to their lids. All three of them peered inside.

“Got anything in that bag for me, Doc?” asked Venus.

It was then that Damon Fain made his proposition: he’d try Nepenthe on one of his creams, and if she didn’t see a change in twenty-four hours, she’d never have to talk to him again. But if it worked, he’d get to use her name and picture in a study he was doing—plus she’d get a lifetime prescription for the medicine that cured her.

“Wait a second. When you do a study, don’t you have to use the negative results too? You know, the patients where it doesn’t work out?”

“Sure. But we kind of gloss over that part, you know?”

Nepenthe thought of all the dermatologists she’d visited with her mother—the teen fashion magazines in the waiting room filled with toothpaste advertisements and prom dress patterns. Those doctors, used to a parade of shiny-haired princesses whose clogged pores or ingrown hairs were barely visible under a microscope, whose only flaking skin came from a sunburn at the Cape, had waited for her with dread. This one had come looking for her.

“You should do it, Nepenthe,” Venus whispered. “He’s a rich people’s doctor, you can tell by his shoes.”

Nepenthe looked down at Fain’s feet. He was wearing spats.

So he’d followed her back to the boxcar, she’d shimmied out of her artificial snakeskin miniskirt, and after snapping on some rubber gloves, he’d kneaded her like dough. It had been the most disgusting experience of her entire life. Halfway through, she’d put down some newspapers on the floor because the thick bluish cream kept glopping onto the rug. Damon Fain’s hands were hot and alien-feeling inside the latex; he whistled songs from
The Duchess of Idaho
and related anecdotes about the world of competitive spelling while Nepenthe took shots from a whiskey bottle she’d found under the couch. At first she was worried about being alone with Fain, but after awhile she was glad Venus had headed out for her date with Zeus Masters—no witnesses would make this easier to forget. It felt like it took hours. All that Nepenthe could remember now was that it had been well past midnight when she’d finally shoved Fain out the door and barricaded it with a chair behind him. Then she’d wadded up the gooey newspapers from the floor and thrown them out the window at his head.

Fortunately, she still had the one she was reading. Nepenthe blinked—she’d been half-dozing again, but the itching woke her up. She dug her nails into her greasy thigh. Jesus God. What was this crud, anyway? It was coming off in strips.

Nepenthe moved her newspaper off her lap to get a better look, and when she did, she almost passed out. Because it wasn’t the medicine she was peeling off. It was her skin.

Webern woke up to the sound of someone rapping at the door. For a long moment, lying there on the couch, he didn’t know who it could possibly be. A cartoon image flashed through his mind: Death himself, in a black hood with a heavy, skull-topped walking stick, striking his bony knuckles against the wooden frame. Webern hoisted himself up off the couch, shaking himself awake. Of course it was the undertaker. He wasn’t thinking straight. His arms and legs felt heavy, and in his mouth lingered the sour, cottony taste of nightmares.

“I’m coming!” he yelled in the direction of the foyer.

Lightning bugs hung thickly in the air around the porch, turning the air an eerie, subterranean yellow-green. They blinked like glowing eyes.

“Hi,” Webern said.

The undertaker offered a trembling smile. “I’m terribly sorry for the delay,” he murmured in a professionally soothing voice. “So many roadblocks in this town. It makes one feel like a criminal, just driving to a client’s house.”

“That’s okay,” said Webern. His face felt swollen and bunchy. He’d been crying in his sleep. “You can come in.”

Webern led the undertaker through the darkened rooms. Richly patterned rugs, like fast-asleep magic carpets, lay side by side on the cold wood floors; cloudy, warped mirrors showed the world curving and dreamlike; and ancient, delicate teacups that Bo-Bo had once remarked were made from ground-up bones rattled quietly in the cupboards as they passed. Webern wondered if it was possible to pinpoint the moment a house got to be haunted, the moment that a creaking floorboard or a groaning wall became a voice. He thought of his own house in the days and weeks just after his mother died, the way her smells—chamomile, lipstick, fabric softener—had returned at the strangest times, wafting up like ghosts out of the medicine cabinet, a long closed drawer. He had thought she’d linger on forever that way, but after a while the smells had faded, too.