Will Baer - Hell's Half Acre

Four hours later, give or take.

I wake up and the bed is empty. Jude is in the bathroom, naked and sitting on the edge of the tub, head cocked like a praying mantis and her hair falling in a mad tangle over her left shoulder. A vanity mirror between her thighs and she’s probing herself with two fingers. She looks too crazy and hostile to be masturbating and I know she hates stupid questions so I decide to pee and say nothing.

I have an itch, says Jude.

What kind of itch?

A maddening itch.

I glance over my shoulder, sympathetic but obviously trying to pee.

There was no itch yesterday, she says.

I’m not awake yet and to my mind yesterday is still happening. I stare at the ceiling and wonder if she’ll freak out if I mention the word imagination. There is water damage on the ceiling, a warped and dripping stain in the shape of Bob Dylan’s head. Imagination is never a popular word in these domestic situations and at four in the morning it might be deadly. The only solution is to back away from the toilet and change the subject.

Water damage, I say. The ceiling is fucked.

What? she says.

It may not be safe in here, I say.

Her eyes narrow. If you say this is my imagination, or even think it.

Imagination? I say.

The feet, she says. I will do something terrible to your feet.

Do you think I afflicted you with something?

Maybe, she says. Maybe not.

I scratch my head, helpless. Do you want me to look at it?

No, she says.

Maybe it’s a spider bite.

Jude stares at me. A spider?

Maybe.

What would a spider be doing in there?

I chew on my lip.

Careful, she says.

Oh yes. I want to be careful with this question. I promptly discard the notion that the spider was looking for food. I like the sound of gravitational weirdness but this is perhaps too vague, too unscientific. Jude sighs, staring at the little mirror. I slide close enough to touch her shoulder, to breathe her air.

Eucalyptus. Dandelions and salt. Opium and rainforest.

I have no idea what her scent is called, or where it comes from. Jude uses a lot of mysterious oils and lotions and it could be any of them, none of them. It could be her blood, her internal juices coming to the surface. Her smell is always on my skin and always fading. Jude turns the mirror sideways, squinting.

Fancy, she says.

What? I say.

It looks like a tiny deformed heart, she says. From a certain angle.

I count to five. What time is it, do you think?

Jude puts the mirror aside. Two o’clock, she says.

Come back to bed.

Why? she says.

We should get some sleep.

It’s two in the afternoon, she says.

We could have sex, I say.

Jude stares at me.

Or not. What about a drink, then?

Please. With just a drop of vodka.

I hold out my hand and she allows me to lead her back to the bed.

There are two empty bottles of vodka at the vanity sink. A jug of ginger ale, a fifth of Jack that we’ve barely touched. There is a carton of milk, unopened and no doubt very sour. The ice is gone and the sink is foul with gray water and mutilated limes. The refrigerator is stuffed full of drugs and cash. When Jude checked into the room, she apparently removed all of the overpriced cheeses and chocolates and white macadamia nuts and miniature bottles of liquor and Snapple and put them in the hall and told the first maid who came along that we didn’t want that shit and that she would personally hurt anyone who tried to restock the fridge. Jude can be very convincing when she promises to hurt someone and the maids have barely peeked in here since. They leave fresh linens and soap outside the door every morning but I don’t think we have changed the sheets even once.

The vodka is gone, I say.

Jack and ginger then, she says.

The crushed pulp of limes. My eyes water. I consider opening the drawer to my left but don’t. I mix the drinks like a robot. Jude is watching me in the vanity mirror.

You have a nice body, she says. For a junkie.

I stare back at her, wary. Thank you.

It’s not hairy, she says. And it’s almost perfectly symmetrical.

I regard myself in the mirror and decide that I am malnourished and freakishly pale, considering that I spent the last few years living on the edge of my imaginary desert. I’m no ghost but three days in this room and I have started to fade rapidly, to disappear. Jude is brown as deerskin.

Fuck it.

I move out of her line of sight, then open the drawer to my left. There is a brief, contemplative silence. I turn on the cold water tap and hope that Jude will think I am brushing my teeth, that she will not register the sound of an otherwise intelligent man snorting a bump of cheap brown heroin that may or may not be poison. Jude has forbidden me to touch it because yesterday, when she was taking an endless bubble bath I got restless and snorted too much of it. Jude came out of the bathroom with a towel around her head and found me nodding and drooling and grunting like a monkey that can’t decide where he wants to lie down and die and soon I was feverish and hallucinating and spewing a grim yellow substance from my mouth and ass.

The heroin has turned me into jelly. I carefully give Jude her drink, then float backwards into a chair and spill my own drink all over myself. It feels nice, actually.

Bananafish, I say. Let’s go fishing for bananafish.

Jude sips her drink, staring at me. Her eyes are sharp as nails and I can feel them poking through to the back of my head.

You opened the drawer, she says.

Oh that’s true.

She stands on the bed, naked and very tall. I peer up at her from my sunken position, Jack and ginger pooling in my bellybutton. She drains her glass and I watch as her face shrinks through the bottom of it. I’m sure I have a stupid expression on my face but there’s nothing I can do about it and now Jude throws the glass over my head. She throws it sidearm like a shortstop and it curves slowly past my line of sight to crash into the wall.

I told you to stay out of that drawer for a while.

Ummm.

Jude pulls on underpants, staring at me. She takes a big black gun from beneath her pillow, one I had not known was there. Looks to be a Glock 37, a serious fucking weapon. I wonder how many guns she’s got hidden around this room like deadly Easter eggs and now that I think about it, I’ve lost track of that Walther she gave me the other day. I’ve a bad habit of misplacing weapons when I’m high. Jude checks the clip, glances down the sight at me. I’m fairly confident that she won’t shoot me because our relationship has evolved. Now she hops on the bed and bounces up and down, rising like a dead leaf caught in a warm updraft. The room has low gravity.

You need to get dressed, she says.

Why?

Because we have a meeting.

I don’t understand.

A meeting, she says. It’s when two or more humans sit down together and talk.

Oh, I say. That sounds horrible.

Too bad, she says. It’s been three days and Miller is getting clinical. I told him we would meet him for cocktails at six.

What does he want?

What do you think he wants? To discuss the film.

I shake my head, violently. Fuck that, I say.

Please, she says. Pull yourself together.

No, I say. Not gonna do it.

I want her to stop bouncing and I’m about to say so when she springs across the gap between bed and chair and lands in my lap. Jude is very light on her feet and somehow I don’t start hemorrhaging upon impact. Now she sinks her teeth into my nose and my peripheral vision disappears.

Get dressed, she says.

Yes. Why not.

A walk sounds fine. The legs are functioning like never before. Brilliant glowing hole where my face used to be but that’s no trouble. Personal supernova. I rumble around the room, negotiating with my clothes. Black jeans and black T shirt and brown leather jacket. Feeling colorful, yes. I dress myself without difficulty and I’m confident it’s a pretty rapid process but when I finish lacing my boots, Jude is smoking maybe her ninth cigarette and gazing at me with disgust. I see that she is wearing a much more complicated outfit than mine. Pale silver boots that buckle up to the knees and a black skirt with steel zippers up the sides, a transparent orange shirt and some kind of black nylon vest that looks to be painted on. She has applied immaculate lipstick and she still holds that gun, I notice.