Hell's Half Acre (6 page)

Jude pushes through the heavy glass doors of Nieman Marcus. I follow her and regret it immediately. The ceiling is fifty feet above the floor and composed of elaborate gold and white stained glass, like the roof of a cathedral. I tell myself not to look up again, unless I want to vomit in public.

These posh fucking stores.

They always have a grinning torturer standing just inside the
doors, a guy whose job it is to greet you with white teeth and cool, appraising eyes. I am about to dodge away from him but Jude gives him a mercurial nod and he just melts away. She glides to the first exhibit and pretends to examine an array of hairy sweaters. I come up behind her, breathing like a pervert. I violate her space.

Dead cats, I say. They look like dead cats.

Jude doesn’t look at me, she doesn’t even tilt her head.

Keep walking, she says. Pretend you don’t know me and whatever you do, do not call me Jude.

What should I call you?

I’m going to count to three, says Jude.

I touch her shoulder and she spins around.

You will fucking talk to me, I say.

She smiles, harshly. What’s the matter?

Everything, I say. Why did you run that scene in the elevator?

Instinct, she says. It felt right.

What was it about them?

You saw that woman, didn’t you? Her face, her plastic fucking face. She went under the knife for him because she wasn’t pretty anymore.

Jesus, I whisper. That was about your face?

Keep walking, she says. Pretend you don’t know me or I will start screaming.

I try to be cool. I try not to blink but I have a bad mixture of junk and fear and confusion in me. I try to imagine how Jude feels, how it would feel to be a woman raped and mutilated. She is still stupidly beautiful, to my mind. Men and women alike still turn to look at her on the street, but that curved white scar above her eyes may be the only thing she sees when she looks in the mirror. Try as I might,
though, I can’t feel what she feels. The bitter shame, the hatred of self. Irrational or not. My brain is heavy with bad water and my heart is actually chirping. I’ve got crickets in there. That coke she gave me was some kind of uncut Bolivian rock, nasty stuff. I don’t know where her money is coming from but she apparently has plenty of it.

Anyway, she told me to be cool and I don’t feel cool at all.

I mutter something incoherent and totter off to look at a display case of men’s watches, as if I might buy a Rolex. And when I look around, she’s gone.

Freak out. Phineas gonna freak out.

I don’t function so well in these high-dollar department stores. The problem is comprehension, identity, sensory deprivation. I have muddy vision. Brown beige gray black. Everyone in the store is narrowly focused on some unseen prize. Everyone is looking for salvation. If they find the right pair of shoes or the perfect new raincoat they will be saved for an hour, for a day. I can’t see the big picture and so I walk in circles. I get lost. I’m fearful of the salespeople. They lean against marble columns, mute and faceless, pods recharging and when they lay eyes on me they will detach themselves from their stations and come forward with teeth bared.

Can I help you can I help you? Are you okay? they say.

No, I say. I’m only looking. I’m looking for something but I don’t know what.

I don’t understand the layout of the fucking store. The clothes are arranged without regard to season or function. The prices are hidden from sight and it’s certainly shameful to ask. There are too many shoes by far and the suits just frighten me. I contemplate a new pair of pants but can’t bear to try them on. I’m afraid someone will come to the dressing room door while I’m wriggling out of my old pants, sweating, fumbling with a knot in my shoelaces.

The polite knock, the hushed voice. Are you quite all right in there, sir?

It’s brutal. The dressing rooms have become these new world torture chambers. I like to ride the escalators, though. The slow freefall, the mirrors. The escalators go up and down, up and down. I have these childlike fantasies that I am secretly a rubber-limbed superhero who can slide through keyholes and I don’t have to get off the escalator, that I can disappear in the crack between escalator and marble floor and get a brief glimpse of the afterlife below that resembles the dark, stinking hold of a slave ship. I try not to stare at anyone and I successfully disembark before security decides I’m a nutbag.

Eventually I break down and ask someone where women’s shoes might be.

J
UDE SITS IN A BLACK LEATHER CHAIR WITH CHROME ARMRESTS
. Legs crossed. She is thin as a spider and she has taken her boots off, her socks. Her naked left foot bouncing. I see a yellow flower in the rain. I lean against a far wall between opposing racks of jackets and watch her. She flashes from psychotic to fragile so fast it’s like watching a strobe light. I don’t know what to do about her, honestly.

Follow her, play the game.

Or walk away and pretend I don’t know her. Tell myself I never loved her.

I stare at her like I want to take her skull off. I put out a fearsome sexual vibe but she doesn’t seem to notice. A salesman with red bowtie and receding hair approaches her, his face faintly flushed. Four shoeboxes in hand. He kneels like a zealot and takes her foot in his hand. Jude’s lips move but I can’t read them. The salesman touches the curve of her foot, the instep. Her eyebrows twitch and from across the room I can see the man’s hands are shaking. I imagine she has said something innocent about male pattern baldness, about men who wear bowties in public and how such men secretly want to be
whipped by a woman in leather. She may have said something about his chapped lips or the sorry hygiene of his fingernails. She may have offered to suck his cock. Whatever it was, she touched a bone. Jude loves to touch a bone. The salesman fits her with a pair of green velvet stilettos and Jude stands, she turns a circle and takes a few experimental steps. She’s looking for a mirror and she walks right past me, her right hand brushing against my thigh. I close my eyes and now I hear a man’s voice, a voice full of smoke and money.

Very nice, he says. You have beautiful feet.

I open my eyes. Jude is standing before one of those low mirrors, her legs cut off at the knee. Her legs float away from her body and the green shoes seem to sparkle. She does have beautiful feet and a lifetime ago, I spent a lot of time biting and sucking at them. Jude ignores the man who spoke to her but I take a good long look at him. White male, thoroughbred. Expensive education, manicured face and hands. He holds a long black umbrella in his right hand. He has an arrogant mouth and I’m sure his teeth are perfect. Probably in his middle forties and he looks better than me. He wears a charcoal suit, elegantly cut. Dark gray shirt buttoned to the throat and no tie. Fine black hair shining like metal. Bright blue eyes. I saw this guy’s photo on Jude’s bathroom wall just an hour ago. According to Jude’s notes, this is John Ransom Miller.

Jude ignores him. His lips curve and he blows softly on her hair.

My stomach makes a funny noise and I chew my lip. I feel strange, jealous. On one hand I am positive that this man is about to die, that Jude is about to turn and just gut him where he stands. But on the other, I don’t think so. Jude is acting not like herself and I can see this guy has some hefty mojo, some bad juice about him, and I wonder briefly does he have some hold over my girl.

You are very pretty, the man says. Are you a model, perhaps?

I recoil, unnoticed. I can’t tell if he’s fucking with her, or if he simply cannot see the left side of her face from his vantage point.

Jude turns, slowly, and shows him her whole face. That’s not funny.

His expression doesn’t waver. I don’t mean to be funny.

I’m an actress, she says. Or I used to be.

Really. The man smiles. I’m sure you were very talented.

Oh, my. I don’t know about that, she says. But thank you.

This new Jude is packing a mean bag of tricks and now she whips out an otherworldly mixture of nubile self-consciousness and predatory voodoo. She is suddenly leaning toward the man, her lips slightly parted and I’m irritated to realize I’m getting an erection. The man looks more than a little bothered himself.

Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?

I would, says Jude. I really would. But I have a prior entanglement.

Are you sure? he says.

Yes, she says. I’m afraid so.

Oh, well. That’s too bad.

Jude licks her lips. Too bad, yes.

The man stares at her and I fancy there’s a trickle of sweat along his jaw. But he’s a tough cookie, I think. He reaches into his breast pocket and produces a business card. On the ring finger of his right hand he wears a heavy fraternity ring with a dark red stone. I hear myself exhale. Jude takes the card from him as if it’s a long-stemmed rose.

You should call me, the man says. I have a friend or two in Hollywood.

Lucky you, says Jude.

Are you a spiritual person? he says.

No, she says. Not anymore.

He smiles. I’m a Buddhist, myself.

Jude nods, considering. You must have a great capacity for suffering, she says.

You have no idea, he says.

Tempting, she says. Maybe I will call you, after all.

Yes, the man says. He stands there, rocking back on his heels as if he needs more oxygen.

Goodbye, says Jude.

The man stares at her, mute. Then turns to go. Jude glances down at the card he gave her.

Wait, she says.

The man keeps walking, his back to her.

This is just a phone number, she says. Who shall I ask for?

He grins at this. My name is John Miller, he says. Then steps onto the escalator and disappears.

Jude doesn’t look at me, not yet.

The salesman sits patiently in one of the leather chairs, his head bowed. She touches his sleeve. I love these shoes, she says. Will you box up my boots, please?

The salesman nods, his face turning pink. Then he scurries away. I walk toward Jude, my head buzzing. The locusts in my head are getting ready to descend, and my brain is a field of wheat. Jude is glowing like she just swallowed a fistful of stardust. She stands with hands on her hips, pelvis thrust out.

Did you not recognize him? she says.

I stare into the mirror and see the photos in her bathroom again. I see a sideways flash of dark hair, of blue and black eyes. John Ransom Miller was one of the masked men who’d come to see us in
New Orleans. He was the panty sniffer, the one I’d hammered to the floor with the toilet lid. He had lain crumpled on his side the entire time, watching as the others raped her. He barely looked at me, that day.

Yeah. I recognized him.

Well? she says.

This is why you gave me the gun? I say. You want me to kill him.

Jude shrugs. Perhaps you should rethink your ideas about fate.

The gun is heavy in my pocket.

Yeah, I say. Perhaps I should.

Don’t kill him, she says. Not yet.

Why?

Because we need him to get to the quarterback.

Senator Cody, I say.

Yeah. She points at the mirror. If not for him, I’m not looking at this face.

What then? You want me to make friends with this guy?

If you want to hurt him, she says, bring me his finger. The one with that hideous ring.

I stare at her.

Go, she says. You’re going to lose him.

I take the escalator down to menswear. Jude stands at the top of the escalator, hands on her hips and a crooked little smile on her face. I’m going to hell, of course. I turn around to face the descent and when I look back she’s gone. The escalator nears the bottom and I wait for my feet to touch solid ground. Five seconds, four. Time enough to contemplate my situation. Jude wants me to follow this man, but I am not to kill him. Thank god for that. I had an opportunity to kill Sugar Finch earlier today, and fucked it up like a rock star. I tell myself that
if I love her, I will not fail her again.

Five years have passed since Jude and I were together. The years just slip away. I take off my shoes and pause to examine my toes and two days disappear. I wander into the bathroom to brush my teeth and a week is gone. I pour myself a cup of coffee and a month floats past. The years tumble past you like bits of paper on the street and you may not even feel the breeze at your back but then something catches your eye, a twist of black hair or a dog leaping to catch a tennis ball. The splintered chorus of a stupid pop song. You turn around and another chunk of your life drifts by like unrecognized trash and it was never yours to begin with.

But look at it this way. Jude and I had a fight once, way back when. The apartment was expanding, warping. The rooms were gelatinous and everything was curved. Our bedroom was taking the shape of an egg. The room was freaking me out and drugs were involved. They usually are. This is a natural law, like the one about gravity. If a body has physical mass, then it will fall to earth. If your hotel room is transforming into a metaphysical bubble, then drugs are probably involved.

Anyway.

Jude was completely nonverbal and I was crouched high atop an armoire, stuck there. I was suddenly terrified of heights. And of her, probably. I watched Jude crawl around on the floor with a knife in one hand, a long bright red dildo in the other. Jude was trying to speak. She was grunting, snorting. I was pretty sure she wanted to kill me, she wanted to fuck me to death. Her shoulders were slick with blood and snot and black grime and her brain was so shredded by coke she would not have blinked if I had spontaneously burst into flames. But that’s just another drug story, a psycho love story. The real
Jude lay curled up like a cat beside me less than twenty-four hours later asking me what color she should paint her toenails. She wanted to drink cheap white wine and eat chocolate for breakfast. She wanted me to stay in bed all day and watch MTV with her. Jude put her head in my lap and asked me in a destroyed voice if I still liked her. Jude is composed of claws and teeth and unblinking eyes but she is vulnerable, perhaps now more than ever. She is a wolf but like anybody else she’s afraid to grow old, she’s afraid that one day she will walk into a room and no one will look at her.