My actual thoughts were that the Tomeis wanted more privacy. The riots weren"t just a racial thing. The blacks were hitting on the black handicapped, too. I could understand Josephine Tomei"s concerns.
My family surprised me by moving back to the southwest side of Chicago. Bridgeport, a few blocks from Mayor Daley"s home on Emerald. A nice area then, the Stevenson interstate a new and wondrous thing, and most of the blocks filled with squalor had spanking new Tru-Link fences put up courtesy of da Mayor hisself. He did this several years before, because Chicago was going to be portrayed as a lovely town during the 1968 Democratic Convention, for all network television to see.
I had several mementoes of Celly; tactile things, not simply memories of her naked, and of her seeing me in the same way.
We had often exchanged books, and I still had one of her Happy Hollisters mysteries. They were on a ranch somewhere, is all I remember. A menu from Ricky"s Deli that we had played connect-the-dots with.
I had felt comfortable on Crystal Street, where we grew up. I realized this walking past the casinos and neon signs. Even in Las Vegas, as in Denver, no one thought of me as being different. h.e.l.l, I had both my arms, for chrissakes, and wasn"t blocking a revolving door. That"s how it was back in the Humboldt Park neighbourhood.
The older Poles liked us-not just tolerated us-because they weren"t too far removed from the atrocities of Dachau. The kids our age, the normal ones, well, that was an entirely different tune altogether.
To them, we were freaks. There they go, the freaks. Some offered the opinion that my mother had f.u.c.ked something in the gorilla house at Lincoln Park Zoo. And though Celandine"s defects weren"t easily apparent, she did have a slight stoop, like the older women who cleaned office buildings in the Loop after the rush hour ended.
The other thing that made Celandine a freak in the eyes of the other kids was that she hung around with me. This was before I got the black sungla.s.ses and I looked like those creatures from Spider County on that Outer Limits episode. Celly kissed me in public. Those awkward, preadolescent kind where it"s like kissing your sister. The saddest memento I had of Celly was a photograph my mother had taken, with white borders and the date printed on the right-hand side. When everyone from St. Fidelus was out on a cla.s.s trip, my ma took the colour photo of Celly and me in front of the yellow brick entrance. To show off to relatives and coworkers who were never told that I was in actuality enrolled at Childermas. Ever. Always in a real world. James Trainor and Celandine Tomei, February 1967. Here in the real world.
In the real world, I graduated from college and left town. Found a job in a bookstore in Streator, then moved on to Navaoo, near the Mississippi. I was going west, too, you see. One night in the latter town, I came home from my job at the International House of Pancakes to find my place ransacked.
The memories of Celandine gone. Everything else didn"t matter. I left the state that night. Carthage, Missouri. Colcord, Oklahoma. Whoever would have me. Not many places would. And the ones that did eventually found excuses. I was The f.u.c.king Fugitive, all through the early eighties. Just like in the tv show, I"d have some menial job, be there a few weeks, and then some self-righteous person or group would make up a rumour to get the funny looking bug-eye out of their safe little hamlet.
Until Denver. It was pure luck that I heard about the ADAPT program for handicapped people while I was pa.s.sing through Sedalia, Colorado. I don"t know why I shucked it for the dj gig; guess I liked the nights better. Denver"s compact skyline, the Flatiron Mountains invisible until the grey of false dawn.
Best yet, I found a friend in Norm Brady. I was at the Wax Traxx on Twelfth Avenue in Capitol Hill, hunting down a copy of Robert Mitchum singing "Thunder Road" for one of the bar"s theme nights. Norm had retrieved the last 45, seconds before I walked down the aisle. We struck up a conversation about Elvis and actors who should have never recorded alb.u.ms, all the while walking down Colfax On The Hill. Norm lived in a studio apartment above the Metropolis Cafe on Logan; I was three blocks over on Galapago. Norm tended bar at a place on Wazee, over near the viaduct, in addition to bouncing at The Lion"s Lair.
Living there was the best time of my life. Waking up to those beautiful and hypnotic blue mountains to the west, always covered with snow, even in July. Until we went to Vegas on a whim and I saw what the city and the real world had done to Celandine Tomei.
Our curiosity had gotten the better of us. We had gambled; breaking even, more or less. Neither one of us drank much. Alcohol has adverse effects on my health and I get ma.s.sive headaches. So our decision was a sober one. A man dressed in lilac, a bargain bas.e.m.e.nt Prince impersonator of the wrong race, told us where to find this ... zombie tongue.
I was feeling natty; dressed in non-touristy black with an olive green jacket. Thin lapels, flowered tie, but mellowed out with a b.u.t.ton of Elvis Presley playing the ukulele in Blue Hawaii. Norm was dressed in jeans and a Road Kill Press t-shirt he picked up back in Arvada, at The Little Bookshop of Horrors, topped off with a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap.
The directions were not that difficult. Maryland Parkway connected with Rue H Street past Eleventh. In the middle of the three-way intersection, cross-hatched in shadows, there was a white building, railroad flat-styled. The logo was a woman in teal wearing a low-brimmed hat.
The name of the place, also in teal script, was BELLADONNA.
Celandine says she doesn"t remember much about those days in Vegas. h.e.l.l, she doesn"t remember much now, with the drugs she"s still taking, trying to forget. A staff sergeant at Nellis Air Force Base tipped Celly to a way to make money, the kind of shuck you read in any of the Chicago cla.s.sifieds. Celly knew that she"d never be working as a waitress in some greasy spoon off Flamingo Road.
The bar catered to those who really wanted a thrill, something different. Something obscene.
Amputees, burn victims. Parading on a stage. I wondered if the armless man propped in that doorway all those months ago ever visited Belladonna"s.
Zombie Tongue.
Vegas is like the Miss America pageant. It uses you, and you use it right back.
The building vibrated with the pa.s.sing of trucks on the parkway overhead. Overhead gels of red and blue, beaded doorways. Flashing squares of soft light on the floor, alternating in chequerboard patterns. Maybe a discotheque in a different time. The decor reminded me of the Go-Go bars in Calumet City, back in Illinois.
The woman on stage was a burn victim; in the light and nicotine haze you couldn"t tell unless you were looking up at her. She was devoting most of her time to a gaggle of skeletons at the other end of the bar.
Where we were sitting, a dwarfish woman with hair growing out of a mole in her cheek pa.s.sed by with an empty potato chip can. Money for the jukebox. The current song was some oldie but goodie from the seventies. "Fool For The City" by Foghat, maybe. Or "Toys In The Attic." Aerosmith always drew their biggest crowds at strip bars. The mole was the size of a .38"s exit-wound. The woman blew away the long strands of hair from her mouth before trying to seduce us with a bloated, grey tongue.
It made me think about Celandine. And of myself. Time changes nothing but the contours of our bodies. (The burn victim on stage had no contours at all-we saw that when she moved our way; she was eternally young. A survivor of Vietnam, in fact. Her crotch smooth, like a Barbie doll.) * * *
The hours pa.s.sed and the drinks took their toll.
I had thought that the term "zombie tongue" was some street phrase for wh.o.r.es, like meth-moxie was anywhere else for drugs. But I couldn"t leave. In the middle of a Windows of Whitechapel song-the burn victim grinding her smooth, gashless pelvis against the far wall-I tried loping over to the john. Green s.h.a.g carpeting covered the walls and ceiling of the rooms down the hall. I was reminded of Elvis"s Jungle Room at Graceland, the plushness acting as sound-proofing. I saw the sign marked ME off to the right.
Near the opposite door, painted black, a tall guy with a shirt that read I LOVE YUMA, ARIZONA came out of the room, nodding his head in a "your turn" gesture. I noticed blood on his lip, purple in the thin track of lighting imbedded in the overhead carpeting. I was ready to go into the bathroom when my eye caught a glimpse of something beyond the still open black door.
A bookcase, and in the wedge of light, the unmistakable-to me, at least-yellow and red binding of a Happy Hollisters book. I thought, f.u.c.k, no. Squeezing every bit of emotion out of me, I pushed the door open. I saw Celandine.
She was naked and tied down spread-eagled on the bed. Her body was thinner than I might have expected. But I knew it was her, you see, because of the head. Celly"s bush had grown up in a thin straight line, like a fuzzy black worm. Her nipples were small and pink. Sure enough, with age, the fingers that had protruded from her stomach had decalcified back into her. Where the small leg had been was a pale nub above the pelvic bone. Maybe it had been sanded smooth.
Celandine looked drugged or weary from crying. I could not look at her. But I found the courage to walk into the room. I looked around the spa.r.s.e rectangle of living area. h.e.l.l, it was a mansion compared to the Cal City t.i.tty bars where you f.u.c.ked the women on the stairwell landings, against the walls like it was Victorian England. If you f.u.c.ked them in the a.s.s, they spent the few moments reading the new graffiti.
Tubes of salve and Ben-Gay were crafted into strange stick-figures. Pill containers littered the vanity unit like perfume bottles. Tricyclic, anti-depressants like Elavil, stronger s.h.i.t like Denzatropline. All labeled with a post office box in Groom Lake, Nevada. The doctor"s name was unp.r.o.nounceable. Blank postcards, her own mementoes. Deer feeding near Backbone State Park, Iowa. Thornton"s Truckstop Diner (Con Mucho Gusto!) Beaumont, Texas. The Big Chief Hotel in Gila Bend, Arizona. The sun setting over Roswell, New Mexico.
Other, more "grown-up" books: Nelson Algren"s The Man With The Golden Arm, and Frank Norris"s The Pit. Theodore Dreiser"s Sister Carrie, the collected Sherwood Anderson reader. All Chicago authors; Celly never forgot her roots. I saw a small ca.s.sette recorder on a table and flipped through the tapes. Came across Elvis"s Jailhouse Rock soundtrack. Imagined him singing the t.i.tle song, "You"re So Young And Beautiful."
I heard a moan.
It was the head. Mouth open, like a dog begging for a biscuit. The tip of the tongue was bitten off. It recognized me. It was showing me.
JAILHOUSE ROCK.
I ran out the door and into the john, vomit already nearing my teeth. Sweating, numb. And there he was in the doorless stall nearest the entrance, my new friend. The man who had been in Celandine"s room before me.
The man with blood on his lip. He smiles then, said how the head felt no pain. He knew I knew what he was talking about. Said it was like raping a girl and then killing her after because she knows who you are.
Do the crime without doing the time.
When he smiled a b.l.o.o.d.y thin-lipped grin and compared it to having your cake and eating it too, hiking up his belt like a real man, I hit him. Caught him by surprise. I pummeled him until my knuckles were b.l.o.o.d.y. Left him face over the chipped porcelain bowl, hair hanging into the water like he had got a swirly.
I walked past the condom machines to the mirror. Took my Ray-Bans off and stared at my bulging face. Beat holy h.e.l.l out of the mirror, out of my reflection.
But had the common sense to wash my hands and calm down.
Went back to the stage with my hands in my jacket pockets, told Norm I wanted to head back to the Plaza.
The girl dancing on stage as we walked out the door had two mastectomy scars.
That night, I dreamt horrible things, like a guy forced to sleep the night before he is to be strapped down into the electric chair.
I was back at Belladonna"s, sitting front centre stage. Celly was dancing, gla.s.sy-eyed. Cradling the head as Patsy Cline belted out "I"m Back In Baby"s Arms." The crowd going nuts.
Celly snake-dancing to "The Stroll," winnowing across the stage, the head dangling over the edge. Men stuffing dollar bills into its mouth. Celly standing and swinging her head back and forth, the cystic head below flopping like a colostomy bag. Celly oblivious to me, the head the only one recognizing me in the whole place, the whole city, the whole world.
Down on her hands and knees, shoving her a.s.s in someone else"s face. Inching down the stage, flashing red, blue, red, orange. Her nipples tiny points. Celandine"s p.u.s.s.y seemingly enormous in the shadow of her body. The stage covered with wadded bills, spat out of the head"s mouth.
The head with a mind of its own, making Celly move towards me.
So that the zombie tongue could lick the dried blood from my knuckles.
I woke up to find it was almost two in the afternoon. Norm was watching CNN. He told me that it was about time I got up, he"d been awake when I got back.
I asked him what the h.e.l.l he was talking about.
He told me that halfway back to the Plaza, I got out of the cab and said I wanted to go back to Belladonna"s. Then he told me to go do something about my breath.
We got back to Denver okay. Part of me wanted to go back to Vegas, to Celly. But I was embarra.s.sed, shocked, even sickened at the depths I had lowered myself to. I took some spare Tegretol for my headaches. I tried for months to forget what I had seen at Belladonna"s.
I watched the WGN superstation for Chicago news after the Cubs and Bulls games. Read about The Painkiller, killing wheelchair victims in the Loop back in Chicago in late "88, and of Richard Speck (still unrepentant) dying a day before his fiftieth birthday, bloated from distended bowel, although the cause of death was listed as emphysema, in December 1991. Everyone felt cheated that the drifter who had mutilated eight nurses in 1966-around the time Celly and I were getting to know each other better-got off so easily.
Norm Brady and I hung around The Lion"s Lair in the evenings and I spent my days rereading old medical textbooks from the Denver Library on Seventeenth. I also read the Rocky Mountain News, my native city showing up increasingly as the civil war in the former nation of Yugoslavia continued unabated. My home town was indeed a melting pot, much of the coverage came from the Chicago wire services. Items about the Midwest in general, the Mississippi flooding from the Quad Cities to St. Louis, a crazed gunman killing patrons at a Kenosha, Wisconsin restaurant. A skinhead shooting a plastic surgeon who "dared" change someone"s Aryan features; what would the neo-n.a.z.i think of myself or Celly?
I dreamt about hot neon the colour of clotted blood, of deformed faces that looked as if they had been squeezed between unrelenting elevator doors. Sometimes I would realize that I had been awake and staring into a mirror.
Occasionally, I would come across copies of The Chicago Tribune at the library. Usually they only carried West Coast papers like the Seattle Intelligencer or the Vallejo Vestry.
One day six months ago, I read of a scandal involving a prominent Chicago network newswoman. Rumours circulated of a lesbian affair with a woman with an acardiac twin. This particular s.h.i.t was slung because the woman was up for a national news desk spot. But, still. I flew back on United to see if the Tomeis were back in town.
Josephine and Celandine had been back in Chicago since the summer of 1991. Someone besides me had seen her in Vegas and knew an even better way to use her. A local writer exploited her for shock value in one of his novels, saying that she had become one of the highest paid call girls in the city, and that the head under the ribcage was dead and often mutilated.
The guy in Vegas was right. The head feels no pain.
But that doesn"t mean you don"t have to fix it.
She is asleep.
I stare out the window, the one facing east. Josephine Tomei died this past Christmas. It is just me and Celandine. I called Norm and told him I had family matters to take care of here.
I left things open.
She is asleep because she still is taking the drugs that she started on in Vegas. The only reason she hasn"t lost all of her self-esteem. I swear I will get her straight. It is 5:30 and the sun is coming up.
I play the Elvis soundtrack to Jailhouse Rock. "I Wanna Be Free"; the t.i.tle song. Finally, "Lover Doll."
I listen to the younger, pre-bloat King of Rock "n Roll, singing about how he loves his lover doll madly.
I pull the sheets gently away from Celandine"s drugged form. The head is still watching me. Dawn"s light slashes a diagonal across Celly"s black pubic hair. I pull off my shorts.
I reach forward, kissing Celly"s closed mouth. It doesn"t open. I lick her breast, the left one, then the right.
I reach into her c.u.n.t with my hand, one finger at a time. I can put three fingers in comfortably. She does not respond. My d.i.c.k is still limp.
"... let me be your lover boy ..."
I take my fingers out of Celandine and stroke the head"s hair. Its mouth opens. The eyes have a certain curiosity.
I swear I will get Celly off the drugs, get our lives together. Take her back to Denver with me.
I move towards the head, my d.i.c.k growing to half-mast. There is early morning traffic outside. In the real world. Our real world.
Straddling Celly"s sleeping body in a half-a.s.sed way, one foot on the ground, the other leg"s knee near her armpit. Positioning myself over the head. Guiding my d.i.c.k into its mouth.
It is not hard to believe that it begins sucking.
(For Denise Szostak).
The Spirit Wolves.
Charlee Jacob.
"The Spirit Wolves" was first published in Into the Darkness #4, 1995.
Charlee Jacob has published in the horror field for twenty years. Once a prolific writer, her disabilities and mult.i.tude of meds have forced her to stop writing. For a bibliography of her work, see her website at charleejacob.com *