Sarah Weinman - Sex, Thugs, Roll, and Rock & Roll

“I don’t care who’s the fittest. It’s not yours.”

“No.” His eyebrows turned in, and he pointed at me. “In the beginning, it wasn’t mine. Now it’s mine. It’s right there.”

I pulled my hair back and closed my eyes. “You’re going to get me arrested.”

“Chill, dude. We’ll be gone soon enough. We got a gig tonight. Remember?”

And then that cackle.

When I reached the front doors of Café Popona that night, the show had already begun. Angel had just hog-tied a young man and was now dragging him behind the counter, drawing a loud round of applause from an audience of espresso-sipping patrons.

Fuck.

“Pardon.” An older man slid past me and proceeded to the counter, at which point, Angel came from behind and whacked him on the head with a coffeehouse thermos. He crumpled to the floor, and a collective gasp came from the audience, followed by murmuring. A woman whispered, “Was that real? That looked real.”

Angel sat on the floor, lodged the ball of her foot into his armpit, and yanked on his wedding band, gritting as she worked on the ring.

I came up and kicked Angel lightly in the boots. “Okay, fun’s over.”

Angel looked up and squinted. “You?” She stood up, grabbed a spool of twine off the counter, and began to hog-tie her victim. “This is art, dickwad. Take a look. You see anyone freaking out?” She finished with the twine, and the audience applauded.

I pointed at her. “You will give everything back.”

“Like hell.” Angel fingered through the man’s wallet, stuffed three twenties down her front pocket, and threw the billfold at the audience, nailing a frail, goateed man in the face. “They love me.”

A pretty woman with long brown hair and a purple peasant skirt glided towards me, her hands out like she was trying to prevent a stampede. “Stop right there,” she snapped. “We don’t need you.”

“Believe me,” I said, “you don’t want this.”

She still had her hands up. “If you can’t comprehend what we’re doing, don’t intervene.”

I was flabbergasted. “You really don’t want Angel here,” I said. “Seriously.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Either you stop it with the censorship bullshit, or get out.”

“No,” I pleaded. “You don’t understa-”

“No, you don’t understand. This woman here is an arrrrtist.” She leaned in for emphasis. “That’s a person who creates with style and expression.” She motioned to a lean, well-kept man exchanging observations with a young couple at a nearby table. “Ever since Tom and I moved up here from the city, this café has become an important venue for developing artists.” Then she glanced at my old high-tops. “You people need to have your little rural-suburban worlds shaken up.”

Angel stuffed a wad of napkins into her victim’s mouth, sparking applause.

“Cujo and Angel aren’t artists,” I said. “They’re-”

“Listen, John Boy.” Her eyes popped and her face reddened. “If you can’t handle art that is out of the box, if you think art is the Kmart oil painting in your daddy’s farmhouse, this isn’t the place for you. Just go back to your ‘basic cable’ and let the rest of us enjoy the performance.”

Basic cable? I stared down at her for a long second. Suit yourself, honey.

Leaning against the side brick wall of the café, I started to rethink everything.

Shit, maybe it was possible. Maybe it was possible that Cujo and Angel had been expressing their artistic sides all their lives. Maybe, instead of embracing clay or watercolors or scrap metal, they’d simply chosen the timeless media of aggravated assault, armed robbery, forced entry, and so forth. Maybe they liked to make crime beautiful, or ugly, or something beyond mundane, something not banal. What the fuck did I know?

A large athletic guy walked through the doors, approached the counter, and was blindsided by Angel. Elbow hitting the jaw, making an awful noise. Audience clapping. Guy looking completely dumbfounded as he lost balance and crashed backwards into a tangle of chairs. People booing and hissing as he fought her off, made a run for the doors, and darted into the dark. A man fingering a cappuccino, snarling, “White trash.”

A patron in a goatee and black-rimmed glasses looked up at me, his blue eyes giant behind the lenses. “This is marvelous.” He looked away and threw a hand into the air. “It’s aggressive, it’s delinquent, it’s full of mischief.” He turned back to me. “I think what we’re witnessing here is the birth of something so primal, so base, and yet so graceful and compelling that the only term coming to mind right now is Criminal Performance Art.”

Someone in the audience yelled, “A second artist, a second artist,” and all eyes turned to a large, dark figure dance-walking at the back of the café, near the milk steamers. Decked out in his Black Hole clothes, Cujo stretched a furry arm over the granite countertop and bulldozed the poppy seed cake wedges, lemon bars, glass platters, and tea packets-all of it crashing to the cement floor in a deafening spectacle.

The crowd gasped. The café owners winced.

Most of the patrons suddenly got it and began to scatter. Some made a mad dash for the front door as Cujo tripped a horrified man, bent over, and relieved him of his wallet. “All right, ladies,” he roared. “It’s time to quit your bitching. You pencil necks wanted performance art, you got it. Who’s first?”

Someone shrieked.

I took a step forward and scratched my head.

Angel began to empty the cash register.

Purple Peasant Skirt squeaked from under a table, “I trust this is art.”

Cujo turned, squatted, and peeked under the table. “You call something art, I call it making money.” He took her hand, yanked hard, and rolled her into a headlock right there on the floor, making it look effortless. She squirmed and clawed at his arms as Tom stood ten feet away, in shock, frozen. “I can take a dump on you right now, and if some pinner says it’s art, that’s what it is. If no one’s moaning about art, it’s just a matter of me pinching a loaf on your back. The word art don’t mean shit, do it?”

Finally, the distant echo of sirens.

Cujo tightened his lock on Peasant Skirt. “When the pigs ask, what are you gonna tell ’em?”

She gurgled and gasped.

The hairy arms tightened. “You’re gonna tell ’em this was art.”

She gasped. Tom touched his chin and took a step closer.

Sirens getting louder.

“Aren’t ya?”

She moaned yes.

“Because that’s what it is, sweetie-crazy-ass art. Art that fucks you up.”

She tugged at his arms.

“And when they ask about tonight, you’re gonna say it was all a big misunderstanding. You’re gonna say some people just didn’t ‘get it,’ just didn’t understand what we were doing here, what kind of performance art we were creating here tonight.”

Sirens closer.

Angel threw a Glad bag of loot over her shoulder. “It’s getting late, honey.” She tugged at Cujo. “We should thank our hosts and say goodnight.”

Cujo released Peasant Skirt, who scampered on all fours to the front of the café. Tom chased after her with an open mouth and outstretched hands.

Sirens approaching.

Cujo looked around the ravaged café. “The party poopers are almost here,” he said, and followed Angel to the back door, “which means it’s time to make haste.”

I stood there a moment, then ran after them. There was no way I was going to be the one answering all the cops’ questions tonight. I just wanted to go home and forget the whole thing. I just wanted to sit on the couch, nurse a beer, and enjoy the silence with the comfortable knowledge that Cujo and Angel were speeding out of town, away from here, away from the cops, away from my home, away from me.