William Vollmann - The Atlas

The old lady wasn't listening. She slid her middle finger deep inside the black woman's vagina. Then she eased the plunger down, and the black woman's eyeballs rolled up in gladness.

Sitting on the bed, he glanced at the old lady's sorry arms. He remembered the dark shoeshine place on Sixteenth with the airplane glue smell where he'd come with a broken watch because the proprietor had a round gentle face and his spectacles were alive and his fingers were repairman's fingers, downgrowing piney tendrils studded with sensitivity, so he gave his watch to the proprietor, who took it into another world where a bird flapped on television, purifying all the spools and bins of shoes and boots and purses and jackets, and the proprietor said something to himself in Chinese and took the watch to a pincer-machine, a clamp-machine and then a sewing machine; and smiling quite happily, the proprietor returned from behind the partition on which rubber soles and crescents of a mysterious silver metal waited to come alive, and the proprietor set the watch down on the counter, on which a piece of paper was laid, and the paper said: The Blood of Jesus covers all of my sin.

Sixty-thirty, the proprietor explained. Any time is sixty-thirty. Trusty me.

How much do I owe you?

Three dollar OK?

Sure.

The watch was fixed, and he was happy. Then the proprieter showed his own watch, whose plastic strap he couldn't fix.

The old lady's arm and soul were both like that. She fixed others, for a fee, but how could she repair herself?

Well, sorry I was gone for so long, whispered the whore who'd been raped with a vacuum cleaner. I got another date, and I just couldn't let that twenty dollars pass. I don't give a shit about that, the old lady said. Do you have it or not is all I give a shit about.

I'm sorry, the girl said quickly, pulling out the bag of powder.

It only took the old lady only a quarter of an hour to find a vein. The girl watched big-eyed, licking her lips. Afterward the old lady started happily complaining about the black woman, mainly because she wasn't there. — That raunchy stuff is what bugs me, she said. She wean a skirt that barely covers the crack of her ass, no underpants, and she opens up her legs when the cars go by. I went by in a car with one of my regulars and she started flappin' her titties. It was so disrespectful!

I dunno, the girl said, embarrassed because she was not listening. I gotta go stick myself in a personal place.

But the old lady would not let her go. She made her listen to the story about the last time she'd gone to jail, when she lost her thirty-dollar coat. When you go into jail and anyone in your hotel sees you get picked up, your belongings are gone on the first night. The black woman said: I don't know what happened to your coat. — But when the old lady got out, the black woman was wearing it when she went down the street. The old lady said: Isn't that my coat? The black woman said: Uh-uh. Anyhow, it's too tight for you. It looks better on me. — In the end the old lady had to trade her for it.

Please, I gotta go, the girl said in agony. I'll come right back. I done my duty.

She ran to the sink, bent her head down, and retched.

I'm sorry, honey, said the old lady. I didn't know you needed to fix so bad.

It's okay, the girl said, smiling nervously in case someone might strike her.

He heard somebody moan when he began to turn the key in the lock. When he opened the door, the old lady was there, wearily w searching for a vein.

He went to sleep and was awakened by a sick smoky smell. She was burning a piece of Brillo pad until the flame stopped being green, because that was the way to remove the plastic coating, which would hurt you if you inhaled its fumes, and when the Brillo was ready she packed it into the segment of car antenna she'd found on the sidewalk and snapped off a piece of and shoved paper towels through with the spoke of an old umbrella to get rid of the lube until it was a good crack pipe, long and skinny and elegant. She didn't care about smoking crack one way or the other. But so many Johns did nowadays that she had to be ready. The last time, she'd used a drapery hook to pry loose the glass tube in the bottom of a Finlandia vodka bottle. But she'd gone to jail after that, and since then she hadn't seen any Finlandia bottles in the trash can.

He went to sleep again and began to dream of something whose shape he could not yet see, but from the other world came what the old lady called magic rocks, which were the ceramic bases to spark plugs; one of these could smash plexiglas if you needed to break into a car window, and one of these now shattered the glass of his dream; it was her coughing. She was kneeling in the darkness that smelled like stale doughnuts and rotten fish, holding the needle in her teeth, cutting the plastic baggie of powder, pouring the powder into the bottle cap to sizzle. He heard her whisper to herself: Pay a dollar seventy-seven for a little styrofoain chest and seventy-seven cents for a little ice. . — Then she twisted the elastic ligature around her upper arm until it sank in and the flesh wrinkled around it. She rolled the bulging vein between her fingers and twirled the needle in, her eyes wide and dark. When she pulled the syringe out it was bloody. Cocking her arm, she slid the red wet point back into herself. She was mumbling faster now. He heard her say: If you get a room on the ground floor, people come through the windows to rip you off. — A minute later she clenched her bloodstained blushing fingers and whispered: Ow, I missed the vein. When I miss, it burns like acid. — It took him a long time to get to sleep this time. Every now and then he'd open his eyes and see her rubbing some new place with alcohol before she quested with her needletip. Finally she found a good vein just above the knee. — I got lucky this time, she crooned to herself. Now I'm through for the night. I had a hell of a time getting it in. Daddy, didn't you hear me whistle? — He opened his eyes again. — You calling me Daddy? he said in amazement. She leaped in guilty startlement; she'd forgotten he was there. To make amends, she came right up to him, naked, abscessed and bleeding, and kissed his cheek. He knew that she wanted to be with him. He was helping her and so she wanted to give him the one thing she had to give. Sometimes she touched him as he slept. At last he began to doze once more and came into the dark room he'd seen years ago in Pompeii with the fresco of the man lying naked on his back touching the naked woman's breast as she squatted on him, stroking his hair, and he half awoke, wondering if the old lady might be touching him, but she was hunched over the sink, washing off her blood; the magic rocks cracked but did not quite smash his dream like the other fresco too leprous with age to make out anymore, just a man and a woman embracing. There'd been a statue of Priapus rising. Perhaps the old lady had just struck a match, because he was out of the dark room now, back in the shining busyness of last week's carnival. Just as a spectator walking along the margin of a parade rediscovers the bright plumes and butterflies which had passed him when he was still, the silver see-through wings of almost-naked empresses, the same musicians on truck beds playing the songs which it now seems will never end, so he followed something sensual and lovely which was probably the same thing that the old lady followed when she broke through her flesh with the needletip, but he never found it because something was pursuing him; it was the sounds that the old lady made, rocking and moaning all night, trying to find a vein. Longing for the courage or heartlessness to put her out, he went to sleep again and then it was early morning and the doorknob was turning to wake him wearily one more time and she came in.