Haunted, Page 3

  “The Fashion-Model Waddle,” Comrade Snarky calls it. She leans over the Earl of Slander's notepad and says, “That color of blond is what women call lifting the color.”

  Miss America had written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, smeared there for her boyfriend to find in the motel room they'd shared, for him to find before his morning television appearance: “I am NOT fat.”

  We had all left some kind of note behind.

  Director Denial, petting her cat, she told us she'd written a memo to her entire agency, telling them: “Find your own objects to fuck.” That memo she left on every desk, last night, ready for her staff to find, this morning.

  Even Miss Sneezy wrote a note, even if she had nobody to read it. In red spray paint on a bus-stop bench, she wrote, “Call me when you find a cure.”

  The Matchmaker left his note folded to stand on the kitchen table, so his wife wouldn't miss it. The note said: “It's been fourteen weeks since I had that head cold, and you still have not kissed me.” He wrote, “This summer, you milk the cows.”

  The Countess Foresight had left a note telling her parole officer he could reach her by dialing 1-800-FUCK-OFF.

  The Countess Foresight steps out of the shadows wearing a turban and wrapped in a lace shawl. Floating down the aisle of the bus, she stops a moment next to Comrade Snarky. “Since you're wondering,” the Countess says, and dangles a limp hand, a plastic bracelet loose around the wrist. The Countess Foresight says, “It's a global-positioning sensor. A condition of my early release from prison . . .”

  One, two, three steps, past the Comrade and the Earl, their mouths still hanging a little loose, without looking back, the Countess Foresight says, “Yes.”

  She touches her turban with the fingernails of one hand and says, “Yes, I did read your mind . . .”

  Around the next corner, past the next shopping center and franchise motel, beyond another fast-food restaurant, Mother Nature sits on the curb in a perfect lotus position, her hands painted with dark henna vines and resting on each knee. A choker of brass temple bells tinkling around her neck.

  Mother Nature brings on board a cardboard carton of clothes wrapped to protect bottles of thick oil. Candles. The box smelling of pine needles. The campfire smell of pine pitch. The salad-dressing smell of basil and coriander. The import-market smell of sandalwood. A long fringe sways along the hem of her sari.

  Comrade Snarky's eyes roll up to show all white, and she fans the air with her floppy black felt beret, saying, “Patchouli . . .”

  Our writers' colony, our desert island, should be nicely heated and air-conditioned, or so we've been led to believe. We'll each have our own room. Lots of privacy, so we won't need a lot of clothes. Or so we've been told.

  We have no reason to expect otherwise.

  The borrowed tour bus would be found, but we wouldn't. Not for the three months we'd leave the world. Those three months we'd spend writing and reading our work. Getting our stories perfect.

  Last on board, around another block and through another tunnel, waiting at our last pickup spot, was the Duke of Vandals. His fingers smudged and stained from pastel crayons and charcoal pencils. His hands blotched with silk-screen inks, and his clothes stiff with drabs and spatters of dried paint. All these colors still only gray or black, the Duke of Vandals is sitting, waiting there on a metal toolbox heavy with tubes of oil paint, brushes, watercolors, and acrylics.

  He stands, making us wait while he shakes back his blond hair and twists a red bandana around to make a ponytail. Still standing in the doorway of the bus, the Duke of Vandals looks down the aisle at us all, spotlighted by Agent Tattletale's video camera, he says, “It's about time . . .”

  No, we weren't idiots. We'd never agree to be stranded if we were really going to be cut off. None of us were so bored with this silly, below-average, watered-down, mediocre world that we'd sign our own death wish. Not us.

  A living situation like this, of course, we expected fast access to emergency health care, just in case someone stumbled on the stairs or their appendix decided to burst.

  So all we had to decide was: What to bring in our one suitcase.

  This workshop, it's already supposed to have hot and cold running water. Soap. Toilet paper. Tampax. Toothpaste.

  The Duke of Vandals left his landlord a note that said: Screw your lease.

  Even more important was what we didn't bring. The Duke of Vandals didn't bring cigarettes, his mouth teeth-grinding wads of nicotine gum. Saint Gut-Free didn't bring pornography. Countess Foresight and the Matchmaker didn't bring their wedding rings.

  As Mr. Whittier would say, “What stops you in the outside world, that will stop you in here.”

  The rest of the disaster wasn't our fault. We had no reason, none whatsoever, to bring a chainsaw. Or a sledgehammer or a stick of dynamite. Or a gun. No, on this desert island, we'd be completely, completely safe.

  Before sunrise, on this sweet new day we won't ever see happen.

  So we'd been led to believe. Maybe too safe.

  It's because of all this, we brought nothing that could save us.

  Around another corner, along another stretch of expressway, down an off-ramp, we drove, until Mr. Whittier said, “Turn here.” Gripping the chrome frame of his wheelchair, he jabbed a beef-jerky finger. The skin withered and shrunk, the fingernail bone-yellow.

  Comrade Snarky poked her nose up and sniffed, saying, “Am I going to have to live with that patchouli stink for the next twelve weeks?”

  Miss Sneezy coughed into her fist.

  And Saint Gut-Free steered the bus down a tight, dark alley. Between buildings so close they splashed back the brown spit of the Matchmaker, tobacco spattering the front of his bib overalls. Walls so close the concrete skinned the hairy elbow the Missing Link had resting on the sill of his open window.

  Until the bus pulls to a stop and the door folds open to show another door—this second door steel, in a concrete wall. The alley so narrow you can't see down any length. Mrs. Clark slips out of her seat, down the steps, and jerks open a padlock.

  Then she's gone, inside, and the bus door opens on a slot of pure nothing. Just black. The slot just wide enough to squeeze through. From inside, you catch the needle-sharp smell of mouse urine. Mix in the same smell as opening an old, damp book half eaten by silverfish. Mix in the smell of dust.

  And from the darkness, Mrs. Clark's voice says, “Hurry and get inside.”

  Saint Gut-Free will join us after he leaves the bus parked for the police to find.

  Ditches the evidence. Blocks, maybe miles away. Where they'll find it, untraceable back to this steel doorway into concrete and dark. Our new home. Our desert island.

  All of us crowded into that moment between the bus and the pitch-dark. At that last moment outside, Agent Tattletale tells us, “Smile.”

  What Mr. Whittier would call the camera behind the camera behind the camera.

  That first moment of our new, secret life, the spotlight hits us, so bright and fast it leaves the dark more dark than black. That instant leaves us grabbing hold of each other by the coats and elbows, trying to stay upright, blinking-blind but trusting, while Mrs. Clark's voice leads us through that steel doorway.

  That video moment: the truth about the truth.

  “Smell is very important,” Mother Nature says. Lugging her cardboard box, her brass bells tinkling, clutching the dark, she says, “Don't laugh, but in aromatherapy, they warn you never to light a sandalwood candle around bayberry incense . . .”

  Under Cover

  A Poem About Mother Nature

  “I tried to become a nun,” says Mother Nature, “because I needed to hide out.”

  She didn't count on the drug test.

  Mother Nature onstage, her arms are vined with red henna graffiti. From her fingertips

  to the shoulder straps of her tie-dyed, rainbow-colored cotton smock.

  Around her neck, a choker of brass temple bells has turned the skin

  g
reen. Her skin shining with patchouli oil.

  “Who knew?” Mother Nature says. “And not just urinalysis.”

  She says, “They test with hair and fingernail samples.”

  She says, “That's plus the background check.”

  The morals clause. The background check. The credit check. The dress code.

  Standing onstage, barefoot, instead of a spotlight,

  instead of a smile or frown, a movie fragment of night sky washes across her face.

  A galaxy of stars and moons.

  Her lips red with beet juice. Her eyelids smeared with yellow saffron dust.

  There, a shifting mask of pink nebulas. Of planets with rings and craters.

  Mother Nature says, “They ask for too many letters of reference.”

  Plus a polygraph test. Four pieces of picture ID.

  “Four,” Mother Nature says, holding up the hennaed fingers of one hand. Her

  bracelets of brass wire and dirty silver, rattling windchimes around her wrist.

  She says, “Nobody has four pieces of picture ID . . .”

  To become a nun, she says, you have to take a sit-down test, worse than

  the SATs and the LSATs, put together. And full of story problems, such as:

  “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

  All of this, Mother Nature says, just to find out:

  “If you're marrying Christ on the rebound.”

  Her long hair pulled away from her face, braided and falling down her back,

  Mother Nature says,

  “Of course, I failed. Not just the drug test—I failed everything.”

  Not just as a nun, but throughout most of her life . . .

  She shrugs, her freckled shoulders under the tie-dyed straps,

  “So here I am.”

  The constellations shifting and crawling across her face, Mother Nature says,

  “I still needed someplace to hide.”

  Foot Work

  A Story by Mother Nature

  Don't laugh, but in aromatherapy, they warn you never to light a lemon-cinnamon candle at the same time you light a clove candle and a cedar-nutmeg candle. They just don't tell you why . . .

  In feng shui, they never let on, but just by putting a bed in the wrong spot, you can focus enough chi to kill a person. You can give a late-term abortion with just acupuncture. You can use crystals or aura work to give people skin cancer.

  Don't laugh, but there are back-alley ways you can turn anything New Age into a killing tool.

  Your last week in massage school, they teach you never to work the transverse reflex zone at the heel of the foot. Never touch the arch of the left-foot dorsum. And especially not the outer-left-most aspect. But they don't tell you how come. This is the difference between therapists who work the light side versus the dark side of the industry.

  You go to school to study reflexology. It's the science of manipulating the human foot to heal or stimulate certain parts of the body. It's based on the idea that your body is divided into ten different energy meridians. Your big toe, for example, it's connected straight to your head. To cure dandruff, you massage the little spot just behind your big toenail. To cure a sore throat, you massage the middle joint of the big toe. This isn't the kind of health care covered by any insurance plan. This is like being a doctor but without the income. The kind of people who want the space between each toe rubbed to cure brain cancer, they don't tend to have loads of money. Don't laugh, but even with years of experience manipulating people's feet, you'll still find yourself poor and rubbing the feet of people who never made income their top priority.

  Don't laugh, but one day you see a girl you went to massage school with. This girl, she's your same age. You both wore beads together. You two braided dried sage and burned it to cleanse your energy field. The two of you were tie-dyed and barefoot and young enough to feel noble while you rubbed the feet of dirty homeless people who came into the school's free practice clinic.

  That was years and years ago.

  You, you're still poor. Your hair has started to break off at the scalp. From poor diet or gravity, people think you're frowning even when you're not.

  This girl you went to school with, you see her coming out of a posh midtown hotel, the doorman holding the door open as she sweeps out swinging furs and wearing high heels that no reflexologist would ever strap her feet inside.

  While the doorman is flagging her a cab, you go close enough to say, “Lentil?”

  The woman turns, and it's her. Real diamonds sparkle at her throat. Her long hair shines, thick, heaving in waves of red and brown. The air around her smells soft as roses and lilac. Her fur coat. Her hands in leather gloves, the leather smooth and pale and nicer than the skin on your own face. The woman turns and lifts her sunglasses to rest on the crown of her hair. She looks at you and says, “Do I know you?”

  You went to school together. When you were young—younger.

  The doorman holds the cab's door open.

  And the woman says, of course she remembers. She looks at a wristwatch, blinding bright with diamonds in the afternoon sun, and says in twenty minutes she needs to be across town. She asks, can you ride along?

  The two of you get into the back of the cab, and the woman hands the doorman a twenty-dollar bill. He touches his cap, and says it's always such a pleasure to see her.

  The woman tells the cabdriver the next address, some place a little farther uptown, and the cab swings into traffic.

  Don't laugh, but this woman—Lentil, your old friend—she loops one fur-coat arm out of the handle of her purse, she snaps the purse open, and inside is stuffed nothing but cash money. Layers of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. With a gloved hand, she digs into these and finds a cell phone.

  To you, she says, “This won't take a minute.”

  Next to her, your Indian-printed cotton wrap skirt, your flip-flop sandals and brass-bell necklace don't look chic and ethnic anymore. The kohl around your eyes and the faded henna designs on the back of your hands, they make you look like you never take a bath. Next to her diamond-stud earrings, your favorite dangling silver earrings could be thrift-store Christmas-tree ornaments.

  Into the cell phone she says, “I'm en route.” She says, “I can take the three o'clock, but only for a half-hour.” She says good-bye and hangs up.

  She touches your hand with a soft, smooth glove and says you look good. She asks what you're doing lately.

  Oh, the same old same-old, you tell her. Manipulating feet. You've built a good list of repeat clients.

  Lentil chews her bottom lip, looking at you, and she says, “So—you're still into reflexology?”

  And you say, yeah. You don't see how you'll ever retire, but it pays the bills.

  She looks at you as the cab goes a whole city block, not saying a word. Then she asks if you're free for the next hour. She asks if you'd like to make some money, tax-free, doing a four-handed foot manipulation for her next client. All you'd have to do is one foot.

  You've never done reflexology with a partner, you tell her.

  “One hour,” she says, “and we get two thousand dollars.”

  You ask, Is this legal?

  And Lentil says, “Two thousand, each.”

  You ask, Just for a foot massage?

  “Another thing,” she says. “Don't call me Lentil.” She says, “When we get there, my name is Angelique.”

  Don't laugh, but this is real. The dark side of reflexology. Of course we knew some aspect of it. We knew by working the plantar surface of the big toe you could make someone constipated. By working the ankle around the top of the foot, you could give them diarrhea. By working the inside surface of the heel, you could make someone impotent or give them a migraine headache. But none of this would make you money, so why bother?

  The cab pulls up to a carved pile of stone, the embassy of some Middle Eastern oil economy. A uniformed guard opens the door, and Lentil gets out. You get out. Inside the lobby, another guard
wands you with a metal detector, looking for guns, knives, whatever. Another guard makes a phone call from a desk topped with a smooth slab of white stone. Another guard looks inside Lentil's purse, pushing aside the paper money to find nothing but her cell phone.

  The doors to an elevator open, and another guard waves you both inside. Lentil says, “Just do what I do.” She says, “This is the easiest money you'll ever make.”

  Don't laugh, but in school you'd hear the rumors. About how a good reflexologist might be lured away to the dark side. To work just certain pleasure centers on the sole of the foot. To give what people only whispered about. What giggling people would call “foot jobs.”

  The elevator opens onto a long corridor that leads to only one set of double doors. The walls are polished white stone. The floor, stone. The double doors are frosted glass and open to a room where a man sits at a white desk. He and Lentil kiss each other on the cheek.

  The man behind the desk, he looks at you, but talks only to Lentil. He calls her Angelique. Behind him, another set of double doors open into a bedroom. The man waves the two of you to go through, but he stays behind, locking the doors. He locks you inside.

  Inside the bedroom, a man lies facedown on a huge round bed with white silk sheets. He wears silk pajamas, shiny blue silk, and his bare feet hang off one edge of the bed. Angelique tugs off one of her gloves. She takes off the other glove, and you both kneel in the deep carpet and each take a foot.

  Instead of a face, all you can see is his grease-combed black hair, his big ears fuzzed with tufts of black hair. The rest of his head has sunk into the white silk pillow.

  Don't laugh, but those rumors are true. By pressing where Angelique pressed, by working the genital reflex zone on the plantar side of the heel, she had the man moaning, facedown in his pillow. Before your hands are even tired, the man is bellowing, soaked in sweat, the blue silk pasted to his back and legs. When he's silent, when you can't tell if he's even breathing, Angelique whispers it's time to go.

  The man at the desk gives you each two thousand dollars, cash.

  Outside, on the street, a guard flags a cab for Angelique.