Darcey Steinke - Suicide Blonde

I watched the clock, waiting for Madison. To me she was like a woman that stepped out of the sun. I wanted her brilliance, her ease, her power. Desire has two speeds: quick match flames, unpredictable as a wild bird stuck in a house, and slow-building long-term desires — a walnut kitchen table, hand-thrown mugs, the steam off the coffee wisping around the lip and a sleepy-looking man across from me with eyes the color of green grapes and long-fingered hands like a pianist's. But what did my worn-out dreams have to do with Madison? I knew people want most what they pretend to hate, that it takes courage to say what you really want. But Madison didn't want a normal life, she wanted to be perverse and powerful, to transform into a monster.

It wasn't until last call that Madison came downstairs and sat on the stool closest to the stairs. Her make-up was smudged, her fisted hands flattened against the steel bar trying to relax. Would I bring her a beer? she asked politely. I sulked, offended she had spoken to me like any other customer. I wanted to tell her I was desperate and lonely, but I knew at the beginning of relationships you couldn't show much need. If I did I'd be associated with the sad men at the bar. I suspected Madison was no different from anyone else. She had an animal sense that vulnerability is dangerous.

I brought her a beer, placed it neatly on a napkin. She asked me for another and when I brought it she asked to borrow my pen and began writing on the napkin. She held the pen loosely, looking up every phrase or two and letting her eyes sink back with thought. I watched her while pouring beers. It was getting to the point in the night when the drinkers get demanding. One accused me of watering down his drink and another said I overcharged. Madison leaned up on the edge of her chair. Her intensity made me curious. I went over, asked her if she needed anything else. She looked up.

“You saw Susan come down here yesterday?”

I nodded. “It was hard to miss her.”

“She got spooked because a man she was fucking said his dick was a snake.”

I shivered. “That's creepy.”

“Hey,” a man yelled, shaking his empty glass. Madison nodded for me to serve him. He snarled like a dog when he saw me make his iceless drink in a smaller glass. When I glanced up Madison was gone. But her napkin was there, as if she had left it intentionally. Stuffing it into my pocket, I called a lap dancer over, a heavy Mexican girl named Mercedes. She agreed to watch the bar while I went to the john.

The bathroom smelled like anxiety. I closed the lid on one of the two toilets and sat down, staring for a minute at my shoes against the checkerboard floor. I took out Madison's note. She had pressed so hard the ink had gone through several layers of the fine paper, each sheet with less ink so the second looked like Arabic and the last like a child's drawing of snow.

Susan said, “He put a snake up inside me, I can feel its scaly skin.”“No,” I said, “that man was just tormenting you — he likes to think his dick is a snake, but it's not really a snake.”She clawed at her crotch so the skin tightened, turned deep pink.“O.K.,” I said. “I'll get it out.”“Where will you put it?” she asked me.I brought over a paper bag. She layout on the bed and spread her legs, I touched her cunt gently, then pressed hard on her lower stomach and made a scream like a TV evangelist, then pretended to throw the snake into the bag, rattled the paper to convince her the snake was inside, then ran into the bathroom and flushed the toilet. When I came out she had her arms around her knees.“It's over,” I said. “We killed it.”“You don't understand,” she said in her sad voice. “That old snake just comes and goes whenever it feels like it.”

I know the girl is right because the snake is in me, knotted around my intestines, hanging off my ribs, snuggled like a lover around my black heart. “I love you,” I said, addressing the snake, Madison, Bell, Kevin, Pig, my mother, my past lives and the new lover speeding toward me this very moment. I wondered if it mattered whether you loved one person or another. Weren't lovers interchangeable when you thought back about them? Maybe that was true in the future too. What I really loved was the note. I always loved odd things: the blue curaçao bottle, the wet asphalt, my own insipid fear.

SHOVING THE BEER GLASSES DOWN ON THE BRISTLE BRUSH, I practiced my calm voice, the one without the slightest hint of hysteria, the one that wanted nothing and would elicit Madison's desire. I counted out the money, stacking crumpled bills. Madison came down in street clothes, demure for her, bellbottoms and a halter.

“Do you want to go somewhere for a nightcap,” I asked.

She put her silver jacket on and told me she had to meet someone else. Before she finished talking I decided to follow her, afraid of what I'd do if I didn't get to speak with her tonight. As soon as she turned her back, I shoved the cash into the canvas bag and put it into the safe under the bar, asked the lap dancers to lock up.

Outside newspaper blew in hectic spirals and the sex-show signs clanged against their shorings. Her silver jacket ahead was like a fish that toys with the surface. She crossed McAllister, then Market. I thought she might be heading for Hotel Utah, but it was hard to tell, the way she zigzagged. Her route seemed random, but she turned her head up to illuminated windows so often I thought she might be looking for a signal: a lamp, a particular picture on an apartment wall. Who was she meeting? A customer? Her drug dealer?

It was colder on this side of the city. The chilly air caught in abandoned warehouses and boarded up storefronts. I liked the shades of brick under the artificial light and the sound of cars speeding overhead on I-80. The cement columns were covered with graffiti and, at the base of some, homeless people slept in refrigerator boxes. I wasn't paying attention and had gotten dangerously close to Madison, who was waiting senselessly at the light. This didn't seem like her. I back-stepped, paused at the far end of the block for her to cross. Red to green, but she stayed put. Her jacket glittered, her profile too took a verdescent turn. Somehow, her strength made it possible for me to leave Bell. Bell's romantic interest in pleasure seemed docile now compared to Madison's insistence on transcendence through sexual stamina. I liked how she treated her sexuality — like a long-distance runner. Love wasn't important, endurance was all. What could it be like to live with those stretched and skewed standards? It reminded me of my own crazy standards, like the ten or twelve things my mother had taught me were pitiful: like slipcovers, bad perms, those change purses that open like tiny mouths. I wanted out from under these, because intrinsic in them was my mother's fear of poverty.

My eyes came back to Madison, leaning on the light pole like a teenager on a summer night. This stance which seemed somehow disingenuous reminded me of seeing Bell on stage. She stood like a person pretending to be alone, not one who felt truly alone. Maybe she was thinking of herself standing on the corner, maybe the image of herself gave her pleasure, or maybe she liked being observed, knew I or someone else was always looking. She yawned, rubbed her eyes sleepily, looked at her fingers, closed her eyes, moved her mouth quietly — then puckered her lips and blew. I imagined the eyelash propelled into the air, twisting and turning like a twig caught in a current.

She was so absorbed, so appealing. What does she wish for, love, money, a little bit of peace? My mother had taught me that a woman was most valuable before she had sex and that her virginity was mystically connected to her stability. But Madison believed the more sex a woman had, the more precious and powerful she became. I didn't move or call to her, but still I wanted Madison to sense I was there, to call me out. I wanted her to say my name, to promise me something. Watching her reminded me of Cybersex, a place on Leavenworth where closed-circuit ‘IVs show a woman in bed asking the viewer what he wants her to do.