Leslie Silko - The Almanac of the Dead

Beaufrey preferred to specialize in the surgical fantasy movies, but those customers generally had other kinks, and Beaufrey was there ‘’ to please,” he used to tell them, with a smile.

The real weirdos became even more obsessed with the “real thing”—they claimed they could detect fakes — an utter lie since Beaufrey had yet to sell an actual “snuff” film. Beaufrey had got a good laugh out of the “real thing” freaks who had paid him hundreds and even thousands of dollars. The queers couldn’t get enough of those flicks of the steel scalpel skating down the slope of the penis tip, a scarlet trail spreading behind it. Asian faces under white surgical masks and caps glisten with sweat as the penis is peeled like a banana and is turned inside out like a surgical glove, so that the penis skin becomes the lining of the artificial vagina. A companion sequence in which a woman got implants of balls and a dildo sewn inside to folds of specifically prepared skin had been a distribution failure, which had convinced Beaufrey he knew far more about the market than his Argentine business partners. The demand for films of ritual circumcisions of six-year-old virgins had doubled itself every year. There were waiting lists of creeps who got weak at the mention of hairless twats and tight little buds. Massaged and teased into its first and also its last erection, the little girl’s clitoris in close-up looked like a miniature penis. It was a great relief to see the dark, thick fingers of the operator pressing the wet, quivering organ into full extension for the blade of the razor. The offending organ was removed and the wound was washed, then packed in gauze and bandages that were changed repeatedly as they became soaked with blood.

SUICIDE

BEAUFREY HAD AWAKENED HER. Seese had slept all night outside on a chaise lounge. A wind had come up. The sky was overcast with storm clouds. The skin on her upper thighs had goose bumps. She sat up on the chaise lounge next to the pool and rubbed her legs and arms, without looking up. Seese asked where everyone was. Beaufrey had given a strange little laugh. The hairs on her thighs and the top of her head prickled; she felt icy drops of sweat down her back. Beaufrey had not bothered to warn her sheriff’s deputies and the coroner were completing their reports inside. Seese started to look for another towel or robe to cover the bikini. But Beaufrey had already pushed her firmly through the sliding glass door into the living room. The deputies stared at her and for an instant Seese thought this had to be one of those dreams where everyone else is wearing clothing, but you are naked. But in her dreams she was the only one who had noticed her nudity. This was crazy: she was wearing a bathing suit by a pool but still they were staring at her. The faces of the deputies made it clear the blame had been pinned on Seese. She tried to remember everything they’d done earlier that day. All the places she and Eric had piloted the “Big Blue Bedroom” car. Seese tried to remember if there had been any accidents. “What?” She repeated the word, looking from face to face until finally she came to David, who refused to look at her or answer; he pretended to read the statement the deputies had asked him to sign.

She did not feel drunk or high, but she was shivering and sweating. She pushed past Beaufrey and went into the hall bathroom. Seese wrapped herself in a terry cloth robe she pulled out of the laundry closet. The robe smelled sour. Seese sat on the edge of the big sunken tub and stared out the window at the swimming pool. No one stopped her when she went outside again and dived in the pool.

She wasn’t feeling anything. She wasn’t feeling that Eric was dead. She was feeling that he had gone back to Lubbock to visit his mother. She was feeling that this was what was true. It had to feel true or it wasn’t; even if another part of her consciousness told her she had heard the doorbell and then voices. Eric was dead. She knew it was a fact. But what was a fact? Eric was gone, but did that mean he was dead? Eric had gone to Texas for two weeks when his grandmother died. The other voice persisted. “Dead” meant he wasn’t coming back in two weeks. Seese lay on her back and floated in the pool with her eyes closed until the police and the others had gone. She still didn’t feel anything. The cocaine had dried out her mouth. Her tongue felt thick enough to choke her. She tried to catch her upper lip between her teeth, but teeth and lips seemed a long, cool distance from her throat. The first place David had ever taken her was the gallery where his photographs had just been hung. She had met Eric there. He knew everything and she knew nothing. But Eric had liked her, and in the weeks when she had gradually figured out that Eric and David had been lovers, she felt calm because she liked Eric so much. David never showed any particular affection for her or for Eric. With both of them he acted the same. He had always been offhand and aloof with her. Now she saw him do the same to Eric.

Then Eric blew his head off. Just like that. Still that might have been bearable except for what David had done. There were many things he’d done, to all of them. Seese realized that she and Eric were what David “had done” to Beaufrey. Aha! Of course!

The next day Seese could still feel the buzz from all the champagne she had drunk. David was not in the apartment. Seese went to find David at the darkroom. Seese had knocked, but the only sounds were clattering pipes in the wall — water running to the darkroom sink — print washing. David was not there, but he had not gone far because the door was not locked. She wandered through the snarl of extension cords, reflectors, scrims, and rolls of background paper. She felt like a cartoon figure with a human body, but with a camera where her head should be. For a face she had a wide, glassy lens that brought all she saw into focus so cold and clear she could not stop the shiver. None of it could be real. This had to be a drug hallucination or a long dream. The walls were all painted flat soot-black, which gave them a strange quality of undulating velvet in shades of midnight blue and black. Eric’s last pull at the trigger must have felt like this: Seese hesitated then dove into the darkness, past the long, black curtain dense with odors of acid and chemicals. The darkroom was warm. The murky orange-red safelights were soothing. Seese felt hidden and safe in the darkroom. Eric used to tease David. Eric said the darkroom was clearly a womb and the best photographers never grew beyond the earliest stages of personality development.

Seese was so high her head swayed like an under-ocean flower. She watched the rushing water and let her eyes follow the colored spirals of the prints swirling in the stainless steel wash tank. The color prints moved like fish of the deep; all the colors glowed phosphorescent in the orange safelight. Seese held the edge of the sink with both hands and let her head hang back, rolling it slowly shoulder to shoulder with her eyes closed. Where was David? Eric was dead, but David had been developing film and color prints all night. Probably he had gone out for coffee. David worked in the darkroom when he was too upset to sleep.

Seese cupped a hand under the cold-water spout next to the stainless steel tank. She swallowed the water and felt the spinning and swaying subside. She stared down at the eight-by-ten color prints in the rinse tank. Among the spatters of bright reds and deeper purples, reddish browns and blacks, over a pure white, Seese caught a glimpse of the whole image. David had been playing with double exposures again. In the center of the field of peonies and poppies — cherry, ruby, deep purple, black — there was a human figure. Seese could make out feet and legs. She thought it was a great idea — the nude nearly buried in blossoms of bright reds and purples. The nude human body innocent and lovely as a field of flowers. Seese reached in and caught a print at one corner the way David had taught her.