Kathe Koja - The Cipher

Gone, of course, when I woke up; how she managed those noiseless exits baffled me, I was a pretty light sleeper but her movements hadn’t roused me, nor the sound of the closing door. To hope for any kind of note was out of the question. The only indication she had been there at all was the damp coiled towel on the tiny bathroom floor.

More than usually surly at work, a surprise because I should have been happy, shouldn’t I, more than happy, Nakota and I were lovers again, weren’t we? Were we? Not really. Not me. It was the Funhole we’d been screwing, not each other; even the memory as it made me shudder made me hard. Styrofoam cup poised at my mouth, the heat of the coffee soothing my sore skin, I closed my eyes and tried not to think of Nakota’s next experiment, or my possible part in it. What did they use to say? “Just say no”?

Why did I waste my time waffling, of course I would say yes to it, I had an incurable problem saying no to Nakota. Why? Simply a lover’s reluctance to piss off the beloved, especially one as nuclear-irritable as Nakota? Or maybe my own reluctance to stop this process, my own near-genetic laziness that found her as easy a tool as any and handier than most? The question exhausted me; I refused to try to understand. Skid and drift, that was me and the way I lived my life, foolish, hopeless, irredeemable, a broom-closet hellhole my epiphany, my one true love a woman who had never come close to loving me, even on my best days, her best days, this woman my lover now again in what was at most a terminal waste of time. Ah God, the happy hells I can create, you too, all of us. Even Nakota. We are all our worst best friends. Don’t agree? Go fuck yourself.

My disgust bred the same in others, increased as the day waned, as if it were a worsening virus and me Typhoid Nicholas and pretty damned glad about it too. Fat women in “Damn I’m Good” T-shirts and men with bald heads and tit videos and teenagers with shitty attitudes, all of them leaning across the counter, slapping their plastic cards and nails drumming, impatient with my lack of speed. I could have gone slower, was tempted to, realized it would just keep them there that much longer. So I rushed, pissed and uncaring, grabbing their money and slamming the register drawer with a rote fillip as patience-less as their stares, responding to their rudeness with my own point-blank fuck-you glare.

When my shift was over, without even counting out my drawer I left, into a growing rain, complement to my mood but making it worse. Rain leaked down the inside of my window; I tried to crank it all the way closed but the last sullen half inch defeated me. The whole car smelled like a wet dog.

So did my fiat: I’d left the night’s window open a crack, or maybe Nakota had. Sure, blame it on her. I sat at the kitchen table, on the one chair’ that didn’t teeter, scooping salsa from the jar with saltines, reading the paper, trying to ignore my mail, trying to ignore the almost certain knowledge that the phone would ring, she would call with a bright new atrocity. And what would I say? Why ask when you know?

She didn’t call.

Working, I told myself, but I knew Thursday wasn’t one of her nights. Where then? Lots of places, the Incubus Gallery, maybe another shitty opening, maybe anything with her. Maybe sitting hunched up over her mouse head, trying to tease out its secrets, to decipher from its deformities the specifics of its journey, telling over the new abnormalities like a rosary for a special new religion; high priestess, she was made for it. The cult of the Funhole. Step right up, we can’t offer you salvation or forgive your sins but we can give you one hell of a ride, just check out Mr. Mouse here, or his pioneering compatriots, the Flying Bug Brothers. Let me especially draw your attention to the one with two heads.

When I slept it was a surfacing, uneasy sleep, no question of rest. Dreams instead, plenty of them, dreams of frustration that rose, froze into fear, mild at first then so rich with terror that I woke, over and over again, my mouth dry enough to be painful, afraid to get up and get a drink of water. Worse yet, my dick was inexplicably hard. I refused to acknowledge it, I didn’t want to begin to think why. It took forever to get back to sleep.

Leaving for work, running late and damn, the phone, her? It was. “How about tonight?” blunt, no niceness in her, my sweet Nakota, and me smiling, her tame asshole, yup uh-huh.

“Come over,” I said, rubbing keys in random hand, wanting to ask where she was calling from and knowing better than to try. “You know what time I get home.”

“I might get there a little early.”

“Don’t, Nakota,” not knowing what she had in mind, sure she wouldn’t spend the minutes in passive waiting at my bower door.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” and she hung up on me, oh good I told myself, heart running hard, now you’ve pissed her off. Nothing less predictable than a pissed-off Nakota, and you, dickhead, you had to load the gun, didn’t you. I stood there in my own anger until, looking without seeing, the dull numerics of the clock on the counter turned over: 8:28, shit

Down the stairs, halfway and I forgot my fucking badge, up the stairs again and down, looking once and furiously at the storage-room door, nondescript portal to all that was confu-*sion in my life, but then again without confusion—jamming ignition key, some jolly bastard on the radio—without confusion, why where would I be?

Imagination can be hell. I spent the whole day jittering, thinking what if this, what if that, mistakes all around that I could barely notice. I kept seeing Nakota’s hand, cool and firm on the storage-room door, walking into some black Xanadu I could never fathom, much less cure. Vanishing like a rock in a gravel pit, a tar pit, sucked in and down and down, loving every second of course but then that did me no good at all, did it now? Did it?

“You charged me twice.” Mean little mouth, skinny little Mediterranean mustache. Scent of Tabu, in all the world my least favorite perfume. “You charged me twice,” more feelingly, the pure injustice apparently tearing her a new asshole.

I didn’t say I was sorry. Reringing the transaction I pondered, I wanted to stick her headfirst down the Funhole, I’ll charge you twice all right. Legs twitching like a mantis, blue muu-muu pant suit going down, down, down, I’ll show you taboo.

Slewing home, water spraying in the omnipresent rain, skirting red lights and I never noticed the side of my hair, the side of my face getting wet from the damned driver’s-side window, broken crank and all but I had bigger fish: is she there, what’s she doing, what isn’t she doing. Is she there ? “There” maybe meaning still reachable, and if not, then what? Drop her a line, right? You can laugh at the damnedest things, or I can anyway.

I went not to my door but the Funhole’s. Wet footprints, a curl of mud on the scuffed wood of the hallway, look Ma, I’m a detective: it’s Nakota, in the Funhole, with a wrench. Or a dagger. Or a fucking nuclear device. Or a baby’s head floating limply in ajar, my hand all at once sorry on the doorknob, a deep cellular reluctance to see what might be there to be seen.

I went in.

Nakota, wet like a shower, mangy hair and mangy clothes, some ratty sport coat hung over her bony broken-hanger shoulders and swivel-ing from her squat to face the opening door with a face wary as an animal’s; seeing me, she had the balls to smile. Not a nice one, either, but did I really need to tell you that?

“You’re late,” was all she said, turning at once in graceful dismissal back to her business. Her coat smelled disconcertingly like dog farts, in particular the juicy ones my dog Jenny used to cut, or maybe it was the Funhole. Or maybe I was going crazy, olfactory hallucinations one of the rarer signs, but what the hell, I lived no ordinary life, now did I? I realized my hands were shaking; touching one to the other, even my own skin could feel the depth of its cold.