Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

Children stumble through these most critical acts with no real help from the elders who are so anxious to teach them everything else. We were given rules and taboos for the toilet, the sneeze, the eating of an artichoke. Papa taught us all a particular brush stroke for cleaning our teeth, a special angle for the pen in our hand, the exact words for greeting elders, with fine-tuned distinctions for male, female, show folk, customers, or tradesmen. The twins and Arty were taught to design an act, whether it lasted three minutes or thirty, to tease, coax, and startle a crowd, to build to crescendo and then disappear in the instant of climax. From what I have come to understand of life, this show skill, this talk-’em, sock-’em, knock-’em-flat information, is as close as we got to that ultimate mystery. I throw death aside. Death is not mysterious. We all understand death far too well and spend chunks of life resisting, ignoring, or explaining away that knowledge.

But this real mystery I have never touched, never scratched. I’ve seen the tigers with their jaws wide, their fangs buried in each other’s throats, and their shadowed hides sizzling, tip to tip. I’ve seen the young norms tangled and gasping in the shadows between booths. I suspect that, even if I had begun as a norm, the saw-toothed yearning that whirls in me would bend me and spin me colorless, shrink me, scorch every hair from my body, and all invisibly so only my red eyes would blink out glimpses of the furnace thing inside. In fact, I smell the stench of longing so clearly in the streets that I’m surprised there are not hundreds exactly like me on every corner.

The ten-thousand-dollar john was a prime norm with only a little sag as evidence of his age. His face was wind-dried and his chest had begun the droop that had not yet reached his belly.

He made a speech from the shower, a short, cheerful speech about himself. He’d been poor and he’d made money, he said, he’d changed laws in his time, and killed men and fathered children. He’d seen five million people lining up to punch his name onto a ballot, he’d seen regiments turn and halt and fire because he nodded. “And I figured I’d come to the end of being amazed. Run out of it, like you’d run out of sugar. But when I saw you lovely girls I thought to myself, maybe there’s more to life yet.”

“He said that,” explained Iphy in quiet pleasure, “as though he were really happy to be here with us. He’s the first we ever had who wasn’t ashamed and afraid of himself.”

When the Bag Man burst in, Iphy screamed at the mirror. Elly almost vomited on the ten-thou cock and the john leaped clear and snatched at his pants with his eyes alive. He had a gun in those pants, fortunately, and he held it on the wobbling, arm-waving, snorking Bag Man. The Bag Man was horrified. The john was fast with his trousers, and steady with his gun. He shook his head as he circled to the door. “You don’t need shakedowns or badger games, ladies. You could do very well on your own.”

Then he was gone and the Bag Man bent over the foot of the bed and raised his fists and pounded again and again in gurgling voicelessness on the pink and flopping sheets. Elly and Iphy cringed on the pillows at the other end. They heard the car start and the crackling gravel as it rolled away.

The car in the gravel woke me. It was too close to the vans. I peeked out as the Bag Man began his hammering on Arty’s door. The twins’ van gaped open with that bright spill into the blackness that always means disaster. I ran in and saw them. Elly was crying. Iphy looked numb. What scared them, what had unstrung Elly, was not knowing what Arty would do.

When Tomaini was doused awake with ice cubes down his shirt front, he talked. He stood, clinging to the back of the visitor’s chair in Arty’s big room. He gabbled at the floor, the ceiling, the walls, his eyes shifting mightily to avoid the stone-frog form of Arturo, and the menace of the Bag Man at the door.

“I’m a mess! A mess!” yelped Tomaini, his special hands twitching and jumping at his collar, at his buttons, at the stiff strands of his hair.

“How long? Why, months! For many months! Well, since they … well, I forget how long … I’m in such a state! They coerced me. They threatened to tell Mr. Binewski that I … forced myself on them! I was trapped! They were ruthless. Oh, they seem so sweet! Everyone thinks Iphigenia is … You all do! Miss River-of-Light Iphigenia!”

I watched from behind the mirror in the airless reek from the Bag Man’s medicated sheets and saw Arty’s face move at last, a small twitch to thaw his lips before trying to speak. He tipped his head at the Bag Man.

“Get his clothes. Some money.” Arty’s face closed back up as Tomaini babbled on and the Bag Man flipped open his notebook for a quick scribble. He passed the page to the console table and Arty glanced at it. No more expression on his face than on a grape. Arty nodded.

“The relentless pressure! Like living at the bottom of the sea,” Tomaini was saying as the Bag Man took his elbow and led him gently to the door. “It’s actually a relief that it’s over.”

When the twitter lost itself in the distance, Arty was still sitting motionless. I slid off the stool and hit the button that shut off the lamp on his bureau. By the time I got to him his tears were falling. He made no sound at all as I lifted him down from his throne and dragged him over to the bed. He lurched up and rolled onto his belly with his face away from me. I crawled up beside him and patted him but I felt miles away.

“Go.” His voice came, muffled by the coverlet. “If Chick and the folks are awake tell them everything’s O. K. and I’ll explain later.”

I went by the console on my way out. The Bag Man’s note read: “Let me break his hands. I’ll be careful.”

Mama and Papa were snoring. Chick was sitting up in his bed staring at me when I eased his door open. I put my fingers to my lips. He nodded and I leaned close to him. “Did you dream?”

He shook his head and touched my arm. “Want me to stop you hurting?”

“Nah!” I jerked away from him. “I mean,” I whispered, “I don’t hurt. I don’t feel anything.”

“That’s weird,” he muttered. He rolled over onto his pillow. His kid face, with a jelly stain on his ear, yawned. “Seems like there are a lot of people hurting. Seems like I should put them to sleep.” His hands scrabbled at the sheet. He slept.

“Is my face clean? No boogers?” Arty tipped his head back so I could look up his nose. “Okay. All right.” His eyes were swollen and as red as mine. “Arty, let me put some ice on your eyes.”

“I want to go now.” He was halfway across the room, humping fast to the door, waiting for me to open it. He brushed past my knee to the platform, turning to the twins’ entrance.

“Don’t knock. Go in.”

He led the way across the deserted living area, his reach-and-pull locomotion soundless on the carpet. He lunged upright and shouldered the bedroom door open.

Elly glared out of bruised eyes and sneered, “If it isn’t His Holy Armlessness! What an honor!” The twins were sitting up against their bed pillows with their hair wild. The breakfast tray I’d brought was untouched on the table. Iphy looked stern but Elly looked like a mad bat, teeth bared as she peered out from under her eyebrows. Iphy sounded tired and bored, “What do you want, Arty?”

He leaned there, propped against the door jamb, looking at them. I figured he’d have a set speech ready to flay them with. He’d stare for a while until they were off balance and then spray them with icy words. But when he finally opened his mouth it was the private, alone-in-the-dark Arty who spoke in a thin, scared voice. “How come?” he asked. “How come you did that?”