Butcher Bird_ A Novel of the Dominion

Eight


Slow Children

"Did you ever feel like you were a million miles from where you'd thought you'd be when you grew up? Like you thought you were heading for a weekend in Vegas, but ended up in Mongolia instead?"
Lulu was lying across the three wooden garage-sale chairs they kept up front for customers. Her arm hung down and a lit American Spirit between her fingers pointed at the floor, illuminating the scars on her arm with a faint red light.
"Sometimes," said Spyder. "But then I remember the scariest truth about being a grown up: that no one really knows anything. Maybe where most people want to be is as wrong as where they end up."
"We've been taking our happy pills, I see," said Lulu. "Know what we never, ever talked about: What did you really want to be when we were kids?"
Spyder stood up and stretched, saying, "That's easy. A private detective. You know, a Sam Spade thing. The whole world'd be in black and white and the streets would be slick with rain and lit like a film noir set."
"Sam Spade was always lonely and miserable, least in the movies."
"But at least he knew something. That makes him the exception."
"When I was a girl, I wanted to be Mary Magdalene," said Lulu. "The most hated woman in the world, but Jesus saw her true heart and loved her for it. I wanted that so much. To be hated by the riffraff, but loved by that one perfect, bright-eyed soul who knew me from the inside out. I used to jerk off to the picture of Jesus over my bed. He looked just like Jim Morrison before the alcohol bloat." Lulu took a drag off her cigarette. Spyder still wasn't sure how she was able to smoke with no lips. "When I realized I liked girls more, I jerked off imagining Jesus f*cking Mary Magdalene. I was Jesus, of course. I wonder, does that make me narcissistic?"
"No, you're more like Mother Teresa."
"I'd have f*cked Mother Teresa."
"You'd have f*cked Nancy Reagan if she'd of held still."
"If she was in that pink Jackie O outfit she wore to Ronnie's second inauguration, hell yes. I'd've bent her over the big desk in the Oval Office and slipped her the high hard one next to the Bible Ronnie had Oliver North give the Iranians. Hell, I'd have bent Ollie over, too. Gotta love a man in a uniform."
"You're a damned pervert, Lulu."
"What's Dennis Hopper say in Blue Velvet? 'Don't toast to my health, toast to my f*ck.'"
"I wouldn't be Dennis Hopper," said Spyder. "I'd be Orson Welles. He can act, write, direct, he married Rita Hayworth and you know, deep in his heart, he's a stone killer."
"That arty f*ck never has happy endings. He's always dead or betrayed."
"Yeah, but we all end up there if we live long enough. I love the guy's certainty. He was willing to ruin himself for whatever he was doing. That's the definition of balls." Spyder checked the door again to make sure it was locked, then turned on the light in the studio.
Lulu shielded her paper eyes and softly said, "Shit."
"So, what happens now?" asked Spyder. "Do we open up tomorrow like nothing's different?"
"Things are only different if you act like they're different."
"Bullshit. Everything's different."
"I've been exactly what I am for years and it didn't affect things. Why should that change now?"
"That was before," Spyder said, groping for words. "I was going to say the world has changed, but it hasn't. I'm changed. And I f*cking hate it. I take back what I said about Sam Spade and knowing things. I enjoyed my ignorance. Give me three wishes and that's what I'd ask for first."
"Reality sucks," said Lulu sitting up on the chairs. "But, if you wait long enough, everything becomes normal. You'll see."
Looking out the studio window onto Haight Street, Spyder watched the people outside going through their happy, blind lives. Couples were going to dinner, ducking into bars. On the corner, a girl with blue hair was kissing a boy in a cop shirt and vinyl shorts. Softly Spyder sang, "When I'm lyin' in my bed at night, I don't wanna grow up, Nothin' ever seems to turn out right, I don't wanna grow up." He looked at Lulu. "Know that song?"
"Tom Waits. Jenny gave me the CD for my birthday."
"When I see the price that you pay, I don't wanna grown up, I don't ever wanna be that way, I don't wanna grow up . . . " For the first time, Spyder was glad that Jenny had left him. He couldn't imagine trying to explain all this to her. Where was she right that second? Was she happy? He hoped so.