Edward Lee - The Minotauress

"Ain't that some shit?" the proprietor returned, glaring at the TV. "Fuckin' Red China's buildin' a hunnert nukes a day to shoot at us, and all we're makin' is a bunch'a fuckin' Chia Pets'n these goddamn Cabbage Patch dolls'n some fuckin' shit called Windows 3.0! What's the country comin' to?"

"I couldn't hazard a speculation," the Writer said, "but I would like a carton of generic lights."

"Fuck! You could at least buy Marlboros... "

When the old crank rang up the purchase, the Writer handed him the $100 bill from the Rolls Royce guy.

"Do I look like the fuckin' U.S. Treasury? I cain't break that!"

Now the Writer fumbled with his ankle-wallet, and put down a twenty.

"Shee-it." The proprietor slapped the change down on the counter.

The Writer sighed. I come in here every week... He slid two quarters over. "And a bag, please."

"Jesus! One dollar!"

The Writer winced but paid nonetheless. "Have a pleasant evening."

"A pleasant evening? You shittin' me? My hemorrhoids itch so bad I could run a fuckin' cactus through my crack!"

The Writer took long strides out of the store, just as a half-dozen Hispanics entered. The old man could be heard in the background even after the door closed. "What is this? The fuckin' Alamo?"

The Writer contemplated Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury as he walked back to the Gilman House. How clever of the Mississippi Nobel Prize winner to title his novel from a line in Shakespeare's Macbeth. The Writer recited the ironic lines with each step back to the whorehouse: Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...

Indeed, the "idiot's" view of the world proved the most truthful...

The previous chorus of crickets was absent now, leaving dead-silence to hover through the night. At the front drive, he noticed Mrs. Gilman's mailbox hanging open; three long boxes were inside along with several envelopes. He gathered it all up and went inside.

"Well, hey there, Mr. Writer!" greeted—if a bit loudly—Mrs. Gilman behind the check-in desk. "How was your nightly walk?" but naturally she pronounced the word nightly as "nat-lee."

""It was wonderful, Mrs. Gilman... "

Three chunky prostitutes in lingerie stood up at the desk as well, a redhead, a blonde, and a brunette. They all had big silly grins on their faces.

"You mean yer nightly walk home from the bar, huh, Mr. Writer?" jibed the red-head.

"I must confess," the Writer chuckled, but only now did it occur to him that he must reek of beer-breath.

"Probably lookin' to git lucky," said the blonde, "but the Crossroads ain't no place to git lucky. All them skanky gals they got up there?"

The brunette batted her eyes. She would've had a great smile were it not for the missing incisor. "Right here's the place to git lucky, ‘specially fer a handsome, rich writer like you."

The Writer sighed. "Really, I'm not that—"

"What's all that?" Mrs. Gilman asked, pointing to the parcels under his arm.

"Oh, the mail. I noticed the post box was full when I was walking up."

All three of the younger girls perked up when they noticed the three long boxes under his arm. "Any'a them boxes fer me?" asked the red-head. "Or me?" added the blonde. "I'se expectin' somethin'." "Me too!" exclaimed the brunette.

"Well, let's see," and the Writer began to read the address labels on each box. "Nyna Rhodes... "

The red-head's hand shot up. "That's me!"

"Anita Gonzales... "

The brunette beamed.

"Beatrice Mullins."

The blonde raised her hand, bouncing up and down. The Writer distributed the boxes, then gave Mrs. Gilman the rest of the mail. "Probably just bills for you, Mrs. Gilman."

"Like death'n taxes," but then she paused. "‘Cept I don't really pay no taxes to speak of. But I reckon I'll be payin' lots more once this Arkansas shyster gets in the White House. Kin you believe the news says he's gonna win?"

"I'm an apolitical writer," the Writer said. "I have no opinion... "

The blonde and red-head ran up the stairs with their boxes, excited as children who'd just been given a surprise. The brunette remained, however, opening her box at the desk. "Oh, I just so hope this is it!" she gibbered.

The girl squealed with delight. The Writer did a double-take. The box read WONKO KITCHEN PRODUCTS: THERM-O-FRESH FOOD SAVING SYSTEM.

"I'se gonna go use mine right now, I am!" she celebrated and scampered up the stairs.

"These girls," Mrs. Gilman said, shaking her head with a smile.

The Writer looked hard at her. "Mrs. Gilman? Why on earth would girls such as these spend two hundred dollars apiece on those—"

The phone rang, truncating the rest of the Writer's query.

"Oh hi, Doris, dear! And how are you today?"

The Writer could feel a long conversation coming so he drifted upstairs. He counted thirteen steps to the landing. What would happen if, say, tomorrow I walk up these same steps, but there are fourteen? And the next day fifteen? And sixteen the day after that?

It must be a slow night; very few bedsprings were heard, but he did hear someone say "Who's your daddy?" but he was sure it was a woman's voice.

He passed a door half-open, unconsciously looked in, then gaped.

"Haa! Come on in!"

It was Nancy, and the reason for the Writer's gape was due to the fact that Nancy was sitting hunched on her bed, one hundred percent naked. Oh, dear, he thought.

Her perfect breasts, however badly tattooed, depended from the pose; she was leaning over painting her toenails. Every contour of her physique seemed to exist without perceptible defect. Redneck paragon... A physical pattern of excellence. Shakespeare could write a pastoral verse-sequence about her, in octosyllabic couplets...

"How do my toesies look?" she asked, then stuck her long legs out.

"Preeminent," the Writer droned.

"Does... that mean good?"

"Yes." Like slow syrup, his gaze drooled down the legs to the adorable bald triangle of creases betwixt them. Even inclined on her elbows, her stomach showed not even an inkling of a ridge.

Though touched upon previously, it must be stated in full now that the Writer was—and had been for a number of years—a self-imposed celibate. It was the sexual angst he craved, that strange edge of need unrelieved. He knew that it's what his Muse demanded: to stare into the promise of la petite-morte only to have it sift through his fingers like so much proverbial sand. Monks did it, priests did it, even Jesus Christ did it, and the Writer figured that if he could imitate just one facet of them, then his writing would be charged by the same verity that charged their systems of faith. But even in his abstinence, however, he was allowed to look. As a Writer, he was a seeker, and hence, a seer. If the human self was the only thing that could be known and therefore verified, everything that that same self saw was verifiable as well.

His penis swelled in his pants to the extent that it felt like a hamster that had died and entered rigor mortis.

"So what'cha doin' tonight?" she asked, rocking her feet.

His teeth ground as the realities bled through the ideal. The atrocious tattoos turned her into a desecrated icon. His autograph was still in plain sight above the "Smiley Face" with a nipple for a nose.

"I was doing my Dylan Thomas imitation," he said.

"Huh?"

"Drinking a lot."

She giggled. "Oh, I heard you hang out up the Crossroads." Her eyes went wide in a hopeful recollection. "I gang-banged ten fellas there once fer ten bucks a piece. Next time you're there, look fer the dark spot by the corner pocket. That's me."

The Writer stood speechless.