Kill Marguerite and Other Stories (8 page)

They laughed again. Easy audience. Mike was getting hunch-shouldered and—sweet Jesus—somehow making himself look twenty pounds skinnier.

Jason turned to Mike. “Ready to rumble?”

“Ready,” Mike said. Then he stepped forward, doing Jason for the first time.

“The first thing that will happen,” said Mike-as-Jason, making nervous gimpy hand gestures (fuck you, Mike), “is I'm going to say: We need to talk.”

“Then I'm going to give you a sympathetic look,” said Jason playing Ju-Rin. “And say ‘okay!'” he used a high voice and cute head tilt and got a few titters. “Oh wait.” He ducked his head to the side and pulled out a barrette to push his hair back. The audience loved this.

“I'm going to be surprised—I thought you wouldn't want to talk about your bulimia.”

Jason-as-Ju-Rin abruptly changed his demeanor. He glowered and, using a deep, croaky voice like the possessed girl in
The Exorcist
, said, “What are you talking about?” The breathy creepiness of his voice had people in the audience screeching.

Mike started to speak, but whatever he said couldn't be heard over Jason's demon voice. Jason-as-Ju-Rin intoned, “Do not name The Issue Which We Do Not Name, ever. Ever.” Jason waited for Mike to open his mouth to interrupt him again. “Ever.”

Mike-as-Jason asked, “How am I going to talk about it without talking about it?”

Again with the Exorcist voice: “If you were Korean, you'd know.”

“So I'm going to apologize—for, it seems—not being Korean.”

“I'm highly sympathetic. Not everyone can be Korean.” Jason-as-Ju-Rin smirked.

Mike gave him a look. “I'm going to mistake that smirk for a sexy look,” Mike-as-Jason said.

“I'm going to indicate it's a theoretical possibility that I could have sex with you—but
only if—
” Jason-as-Ju-Rin said, producing a slip of paper in his hand with a magician's flourish, “
someone
immediately runs to the drug store and gets the items on this very important list.”

“I am immediately going to run this very important errand so that we can have the sex we aren't going to ever have—when I notice that laxatives are first on the list.”

“I am going to rejoice in the fact that you are
so
stupid! This will give me a cheery bunny look.” Jason doing Ju-Rin's cheery bunny look got a laugh.

“I am unable to handle confronting you when you're wearing the cheery bunny look.”

“I know.”

“I am—”

“Love you,” Jason-as-Ju-Rin interrupted, his voice now high and squeaky.

The audience laughed.

“Okay,” Jason said to the audience, becoming himself again. “I think that's all the context you need.” He turned to Mike. “Let's do it.”

Mike-as-Jason nodded and stepped forward.

“We need to talk. About your bulimia.”

There was a torturous silence, Jason-as-Ju-Rin using the time to look up and slowly, slowly raise his eyebrow. As he did this, Mike-as-Jason slowly deflated.

The two sustained the moment, staring at each other until they could hear audience members shifting in their seats.

“Run this errand for me? We'll talk after you get back.” Jason-as-Ju-Rin held out a list to Mike-as-Jason.

Mike looked uncertain, reaching for the list, but Jason-as-Ju-Rin pulled the paper back.

“No, no. Nevermind. You don't have to.”

“Wait—fine—I'll go,” Mike-as-Jason offered.

“No,” Jason-as-Ju-Rin quickly responded, and held the scrap of paper further out of reach.

“But I want to,” Mike-as-Jason responded, trying to grab the paper.

“Nevermind!”

“Want to!”

Mike finally seized the scrap of paper.

“Thanks, sweetie,” said Jason-as-Ju-Rin cheerily.

The two men turned together: “And—scene!”

They bowed repeatedly. The applause was staggering.

At home, the apartment reeked and a covered saucepan was on the stove. Jason cautiously lifted the lid and—look who forgot to clean up her vomit. Thanks, sweetie. Fuck. He poured the puke into the trash can and watched the chunks glop over the wreckage: a drippy carton of Neopolitan ice cream, a jar of peanut butter, a carton of orange juice, and then some. He took out the trash: there goes that paycheck. Inside, he washed the saucepan and lid, then sprayed the kitchen with Lysol.

“I gotta ask, man,” Noah blurted. It was three months later, backstage at the Beat. “Don't you feel guilty?”

Jason shrugged, yawned. “Noah, when you haven't had sex in six months, the high sperm count just squeezes the guilt right out of you.”

Pause. The guys laughed a beat later.

He checked his watch. “Hey, I gotta, you know, get ready,” he said. They left.

He stared himself down in the filmy mirror, then turned away from it. Hard to feel guilty with all the shit she put him through. When every time he told her she had to stop, she looked him in the eye and lied: she
had
stopped. When every time he said the right things—she was beautiful, she didn't need to lose weight, he loved her the way she was—she looked at him like he was some idiot.

“The Diary,” he announced, holding the mic with both hands. “She leaves it open on the kitchen table, wide open, obscenely inviting me to invade her private thoughts.”

He held the mic up and in a dirty, sexy falsetto breathed, “
Read me, you motherfucker
—
you know you want to
!”

He put the mic on the stand. “But I don't read it. I'm a nice guy.”

He smiled. “This drives her crazy,” he said. “I know it does. Because I've found the diary open not once,” he held out his fingers, “not twice, not three times—but every fucking day for a month.

“So last time she came home, I said, ‘Don't leave this out again or,'” he shook a finger at the audience and sang, “‘you'll be sorry.'

“And she did. She left it out again.” He let them absorb that information, then hauled out the journal from the back of his pants. “Here it is—let's check out the highlights.”

Laughter, clapping. He was nailing the timing. But he was also floating on autopilot. Half his mind was on his set; the other half was watching a woman in the audience
as she turned and bent over to grab her purse, the knobs of her spine showing through her thin blouse.

He flipped the pages. “Now, if I wasn't stuck for material tonight, I'd go on
not
reading it—because it drives her batshit.”

Remembering Ju-Rin in the walk-in closet, he flinched. Ju-Rin kneeling, bent over a giant Ziploc bag in her fancy dress, her vertebrae pushing through her skin. He'd caught her in the bathroom mirror as he was getting ready for their date last week, dinner at a fancy restaurant to celebrate this very gig. Her fingers went deep; tears leaked out her eyes as her slimy fingers hammered down the back of her throat.

“See, I've
learned
about myself through this relationship. Isn't that nice, to really learn about yourself? I've learned...that I'm one passive aggressive sonofabitch.” The audience laughed.

He stared at her in the mirror. Don't bother to close the closet door or anything. Jesus. As if she sensed his stare, she glanced up and met it in the mirror, her eyes wet, defiant, her fingers still going at it, reaching down. Then she shifted so he couldn't see her face, just her back as her head bent down, the hard bolts of her spine jerking above the low-cut back of the dress.

“I've also learned that my passive aggressiveness is on a whole other level from hers. Infinitely more passive, infinitely more aggressive,” he said over the laughter.

“So bring it on,
bitch
.”

He pulled open the medicine cabinet mirror a little bit more, angled it so he could watch. The rice porridge came up in small spurts of gooey whiteness. Her fingers went back at it with vigor, wetly stroking. He watched them push down deep to trigger her gag reflex. Her jaw muscles
worked to widen further until she looked like she might swallow her own hand.

Her fingers left a glistening trail of saliva from her wet lips, and he pressed his boner into the edge of the bathroom counter.

Later, at the restaurant, he'd said to her, “So, when are you coming to see the new set?” The fork paused on the way to her lips. She chewed thoughtfully, then said she didn't want to jinx him. Things were going so well.

“They are, aren't they?” he said. They clinked their glasses.

He frowned down at the page in front of him.

“Okay. June 11th.” He cleared his throat. “Things with Jason are going so well....”

The audience roared.

MY FATHER AND I WERE BENT GROUNDWARD

My father and I were bent groundward and picking up pebbles while arguing in our confused, disconnected way, when from up above and behind us the sword of Hephaestus swung down mercilessly to slice my father all the way plumb from his asshole through to his left hip. Then for a second go it came back around, back into the asshole and down through the groin to sever his left leg completely. The sword of Hephaestus was forged of a bronze and silver hybrid that changed color from bronze to silver to blinding in the light. It was lean and strong, and handled effortlessly as it whipped through my father's ass.

Before disengaging itself from his body, my father's left leg shivered a bit, then plopped over and into the sand. From his pelvis, blood sprayed in an arced line, like water from an oscillating sprinkler. I rushed towards him, sorry for all I had said, and intending to offer support before he lost balance completely. As I ran I saw with horror from the corner of my bulging, terrified eyeball that the sword of Hephaestus was now swinging swift and directly toward me. There was no getting away: I knew this, and flinched. The sword of Hephaestus caught me between the thighs and sliced off my right leg, easy. The blade took an abrupt swerve then, the flat side slapping
my ass before striking the ground and rescinding into an overcast sky.

As you might guess, we hopped around screaming as blood gushed out of our hip joints and clotted the sand into crimson lumps. Having always been the more competent in times of crisis, I bent down, wincing at the pain in my sliced socket, and picked up my father's left leg and my right leg, respectively. I ordered my father to walk west along the river. I linked my arm with his and we managed to pogo together, like the elementary school field-day game where you tie your right leg to somebody else's left leg and become a three-legged creature, only we had no third leg to share. All the while, my father wouldn't look at me, not even a sideways glance. I spent the time wondering what Hephaestus had meant by such a mean swipe; he of all the gods seemed most likely to be sympathetic. In silence, we continued to take generous hops by turn, our remaining legs strong as steel, as we advanced towards the closest hospital, where the doctors stitched us back up, saying we were lucky he didn't slice through our hearts.

I guess we weren't supposed to have gone to the hospital, because it made things a lot worse in the long run. A few hours after arriving back home, where my mother stirred spaghetti in a strong steel pot, I felt a strange rumbling in my hip socket precisely where my leg had been stitched back on. My father expressed feeling a similar quake in the middle of his left pelvis. That was when I knew we were to bear immortal children from our wounds. I quickly unlaced my stitches and pulled off my leg, allowing a full-grown god named Meninges to spring out, panting heavily; he had almost suffocated in there. My father
did the same with his stitches, and from his pelvis leapt a beautiful goddess named Hysteria, with golden locks, coral lips, and the rest.

Hysteria and Meninges immediately embraced, ignoring their injured parents. My father and I stitched ourselves back up; it's not hard once there are holes to guide you. Looking at one another, we each saw our children's mythologies in the other's face. They would love each other, grow old together, despite/because of having an unusual sex life and an uncommonly high number of shared genes.

It has been difficult knowing my son's father is also my sister's father: it's like in the movie
Chinatown
, with the difference being obvious. For me, this has all been a small if unusually sharp bump in the proverbial road of life; for my father, it has been a wall. He walks now with an imagined limp; his head, shoulders, knees, and toes all drag, increasingly lifeless as the years proceed. But my father has always been a homophobe. The knowledge that his immortal child was born with the sword of another man, and the ugliest of gods to boot, is simply too humiliating. This is what we had been arguing about in the first place: why I was so unfeminine, and couldn't I be normal. I had said I don't like being penetrated. He had claimed to dislike it as well.

We have never much talked about our experience with Hephaestus. It is the elephant in the room, as you can imagine. It's discomfiting to have these scars, like matching tattoos, marking the history of what we most wish we had not been through together. Otherwise we're not very close, which I've always thought a shame. We're alike in so many ways.