ME AND GIN
Me and Gin play Lips. This a game where you see how long you can touch lips before you need to scream. Gin always the one screaming first, I guess not always, sometimes I scream first cause I don’t want to seem like no weird lips lover.
Me and Gin’s both girls. See.
Me and Gin go over each other’s houses, mostly hers though, cause my daddy don’t like wearing shirts always, and Gin says he got flabby baby boobs, and when I tell Daddy this he cups what he got and says, That bitch just can’t handle her fiery attraction, and I laugh cause it seems like the right thing to do, and Daddy digs out the last of the Skoal and places it tenderly.
Me and Gin decided it ain’t cool to call each other bitch. I nod and nod at her, I want her to know I agree, but inside I am forlorn, I will have to find another word that sounds so powerful. Bitch like a bull stamping its hooves, bitch like a broom after a crow.
Me and Gin got to agree on things, cause she’s my first friend and I got to hold on tight.
Me and Gin like to play preacher and supplicant, Gin is always the preacher and I am always the supplicant. Gin saying, You a fearful sinner, young lady, and me heaving my shoulders, begging, Please. I never say what I’m pleasing for, just Please, please.
Sometimes Gin slaps me in the head and I fall and wriggle, watching the pink blades of her ceiling fan with my boggled eyes, I am consumed with the power of her touch, least I think that’s what I’m doing, other times Gin’ll say, All right, cause that means she’s done and I need to be done too.
Me and Gin hold hands in the movies, practicing, till a fat lady sits in our row.
Me and Gin had a fight once, when I came upon her sitting on my brother’s bed like she does on mine. And my brother just tiddling with his football, poke arms sticking out his muscle shirt like creamy bone. Gin and my brother, talking like they was afraid of the sound. And me wanting to say, Hold up, this is mine and this is mine, I almost said it, but I didn’t, cause no one likes to be claimed. Instead I said, Guess I’ll go to the bathroom now, and I did, and I looked at my face in the mirror so long I got so I couldn’t recognize it.
Me and Gin made up and she let me wear her hair clip for the afternoon.
Me and Gin like to ride our bikes out to the Circle K. I get Gin a Faygo and me a Yoo-hoo and this one time at the last second I add a six-pack of lightbulbs, a treat for Gin, she don’t know what joy she in for. We ride a few blocks and then I say, Okay, Gin, time to stop. Then I show her what I mean, I get me a lightbulb and place it on the ground and then I whomp on it with both feet, the sound, the sound, the God-loving crunch. Now you, I tell Gin, but she ain’t smiling like I am, and she don’t take the lightbulb from my hand. Have fun cleaning that up, Gin says, and goes after her kickstand with a fury that makes her miss it the first try. I didn’t mean to, I call after her, cause this is what you supposed to say in a apology situation, but Gin don’t look back. But see I did mean to, how could I not?
Me and Gin decide she is right, we are too old and feminine for stomping anything into dust. Gin’s momma makes us graham crackers and butter, Gin licking the butter off with the tip of her tongue, I say, No, thanks, I ate a healthy lunch, which is a lie.
Me and Gin talk about what we going to wear the first day of school, I pretend to think about it and say, I believe I will wear my jean shorts and a T-shirt. I don’t have no other options, cause Daddy says we got to make do with what we have, ’less clothes rain from the sky that is, and that is A-OK by me, I like my shorts. But Gin is disappointed, her face a curdled pie, so I add, And some cherry lip chap, and this does the trick.
Me and Gin. That is fun to say, it is right, it is a joyful clump of words. Me and Gin is forever, we planets, everything outside us all but a darkness.
Me and Gin say we best get the same classes or else, cause we is best friends and nothing can change that. I say, Yep, we blood brothers, cause it is nighttime and I’m in my sleeping bag on her floor and it is like the night sky burbling stars is inside me, but Gin says, We ain’t boys, and we don’t mess with blood, and this is a disappointment, but I let it pass, I pretend to sleep, I don’t tell Gin how our blood glitters, how we half light, I keep all that to myself.
OUR MAN
THE SISTER:
Don’t worry, I said. This will hurt, and then it won’t. Or go ahead and worry, I said, if that’s the kind of person you are.
THE DETECTIVE:
What am I here for, if the crime’s been solved?
First you hafta name the crime.
Easy: murder.
That’s only the beginning, Detective Tin Ears.
One of those.
One of those. Better you than me. I’ve got enough blood on my hands.
I’ll start with the scene.
When you find out where that is, you let me know.
Women.
Women.
THE SISTER:
How about this: a man bleeds in velvety ribbons. Our man is a teapot with two spouts. His heart is still intact, if that’s what you’re worried about. (His heart is the problem.) Our man bleeds blackly, redly, deadly. Our man was gone in a few great gushes. I’m a collector and I came to.
It’s me. You can be you. I’ve been honest and I’m being honest now. Blood is just as thick as we’ve heard. Blood doesn’t cool if you admit relief. That rustcolored pump will throb on and on.
Somebody tarred Daddy to the floor.
I can’t deny it’s gorgeous that a brain sees what its experience has trained it to see. If you’ve never known love it’s clear you’d mistake it for something else. Loneliness perhaps. Greed.
How about: blood congeals and forms a skin. Or: our man’s dying breath lasted fifteen seconds. This: we both love(d) you more than life itself.
THE DETECTIVE:
The detective set out. Squeezed the last bits of whiskey from the Ziploc he kept in his breast pocket. The road unfurled in the white wash from his headlights. He had her underwear in his fist, damp with blood, and when he held them to his mouth he smelled iron, or something that should be called iron. Perhaps it really was a man’s blood.
When they found her, two severed ears were gripped in her bloodslick hands. She declined the offer to hand them over. She was naked except for the underwear. A lady cop was called in to cuff her.
The detective held his breath driving past the cemetery, pushing the panties into his mouth just short of gagging.
THE WIFE:
I was born with an extra spine in a lump on my shoulder. My parents had it removed but I can still feel it. Like a ghost limb. Like a ghost twin. She grew up and lived and she weighs me down and we share everything. My parents called her Imaginary Friend. Sometimes it’s just too hard to relate to the real thing. None of this is true, of course. It’s just the easiest way to explain.
Of course none of this is true. I’ll try another way. There was a girl that died mysteriously down the street when I was growing up. After her funeral I saw her white face in her bedroom window, watching me, mouthing, Wait for me, wait for me, and I waited and I’m still waiting. Every once in a while I hear her name being called, but there’s never an answer.
No. No. No. No.
Here: her room was across the hall. At night I stood outside her door and listened for her breathing but I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of silence. I watched her chest not move. She was dead and then the morning would come and she was alive. There was no way she could die. There was no way she could be revived. We wrote notes to each other and slid them under our doors. Mine said, I wish I was alone. Hers said, I miss you.
THE SISTER:
Oh, and the way he’d kiss me. Like I was you. Like I was the you he always dreamed I was. If you are discourteous with a rose its petals will bruise. That’s how he kissed me, so gorgeously discourteously. I could feel my heart beating in my lips. I could feel the throb of blood.
THE DETECTIVE:
The detective stopped at a do-it-yourself car wash. Got out and leaned against the car, did a few toots of Afrin. The lights hummed and a hot moist wind came in and made his neck sweat. He’d punched in three hours and forty-seven minutes ago. He had four hours and thirteen minutes to go. He had to be looking for something.
Pretty soon he heard the squeaking, like a mouse caught in a trap. The lights blinded him and all he saw was a vivid darkness. He listened to her getting closer.
Then she was there, squinting up at him from the edge between light and dark. A child’s head, the cherubic face, the purple empty gums, the wisps of hair. The body of a trucker, its puffed, sexless chest, its clumpy limbs. The wheelchair and the mangled hands forcing its wheels along. The drool bright on her chin. The smell of urine and cinnamon chewing gum. The MacGuffin.
She motioned to the Afrin and he gave it to her. He was glad for the other one he had in the glove compartment.
Pretty soon he couldn’t smell the urine anymore. He got used to it. She wheeled away and he figured that meant follow. He figured he had to start somewhere.
A JOKE, PUNCH LINE FORTHCOMING:
Once there was a man who wanted to build his wife the house of her dreams. He began working for a contractor, building other people’s houses, and each day he’d steal a brick, hiding it under his shirt or in his lunch pail and bringing it home. On his final day the contractor caught him. Please, the man said. This is the last brick I need to complete my house. I’ll do anything for that brick. Well, the contractor said, I’m going to throw it up as high as it’ll go, and if you can catch that brick it’s yours and I won’t come after you for the others. The man agreed that it was a fair proposition. The contractor took a few steps back, breathed deeply, and flung the brick high. The sun flashed behind it. The man’s heart pounded desperately.
THE DETECTIVE:
The detective began to feel the effects of the whiskey and Afrin. He put a few gobs of Vicks under his nostrils and talked to himself in the rearview. A man is dead, we can all agree on that. Count to ten. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Oh hell. Ten. Remember that God and murder are in the details. He noticed that the area around his mouth was a bit pink from the bloody underwear. He got stern. You’re makin me sick. Stop talkin to yourself and get out there and do it. The Vicks made his eyes water.
The MacGuffin squeaked along in front of him. The tears in his eyes and the headlights smeared everything and he lost her. He circled back to the office so he could start again, retrace his steps.
THE WIFE:
In my opinion she couldn’t tell she existed. That’s why she does it (did it) to us.
He had a tattoo of a heart over his heart because he said that’s how he knew where he ended and we began.
I still have those notes. I wonder if she kept mine. Oh God, all that blood? Is he a ghost now? Is he a white face in a window? Were we married?
THE SISTER:
We love(d) you more than all the bricks in Brooklyn.
THE DETECTIVE:
If this is tedious to you, Tin Ears, there’s a desk job with your name on it.
Murder’s tedious.
That’s just a label. We got a ransom letter. Prints all over it. Pubic hair taped in a circular clump—looks like it might be the point of the exclamation point.
Cripes. What’s it say. (come on come on)
Search me. I don’t read shouting. Bad for the eyes. Jameson, read it to me.
And.
It says if you want the body you’ll have to kill for it.
That doesn’t make any sense.
It makes perfect sense, Tin Ears. Perfect sense.
What’s it askin.
It’s asking you to produce the body. No body no death.
THE SISTER:
Dearest love, let me count the ways. Dismemberment, garroted, poisoned, drowned, named. I read that as soon as a species is named it begins its travels up the endangered list. Discovery meaning death.
He asked me to cut him. I did. The blood, disappointingly, did not drip. It seeped. We gathered it with a tiny blue washcloth.
THE CORPSE:
Ahem. I believe I’ve earned the right to step in here. At least as some kind of oxymoronic metaphor for this plus this equals that. The dimple in my tie filled with blood. I was wived and I made my wife a widow. And is this really me speaking? Am I being imagined?
Somebody tarred Daddy to the floor. My ears splitting, off they went.