Living Center Press

(Please excuse the formatting.  When I attempted to copy and paste my manuscript from word, Yola put in an extra line space between paragraphs.)

1. THURSDAY

 

Short, simple sentences are a wonderful thing.  Do you like short, simple sentences? The good thing about short, simple sentences is that they save time.  There are a lot of long, fancy sentences in the world.  There are a lot of long-winded people in the world who waste your time with long-winded sentences.  They write long-winded sentences and then they feel wonderfully proud of themselves.

     I’m here by myself writing short, simple sentences but I’m not proud of myself.  I’m just passing time.  There is nobody here except the woodpecker and me.  So far none of my sentences is over fifteen words.  Yes, I’m counting.  I know your heart is leaping with joy over this noble feat.  I know the suspense is killing you.  Will I write a sentence over fifteen words or not?  I know you are waiting with bated breath to see if I write a sentence over fifteen words.   Anyway, it makes me happy to write short, simple sentences. So, I will continue to write short, simple sentences whether you like them or not.

     The woodpecker is tapping away outside on the dying oak tree and I am tapping away on this old typewriter.  It is a sunny day in late August, in case you want to know.  And if you don’t want to know whether it is sunny day or whether it is August, I am telling you any way.  This is my book, not yours.  This is my book of short, simple sentences.  Maybe you wouldn’t write a book of short, simple sentences.  You can write whatever kind of book you want and I will write this book of short, simple sentences.  I’ll write this book of short, simple sentences and watch the woodpecker outside on the old oak tree.  The woodpecker is happy tapping on the dying branch of a tree and I am happy tapping on this rundown Smith-Corona typewriter.

     Yes, I am here on this sunny, August day passing the time.  I’m here writing my book and watching the woodpecker and the distant hills and the blue sky and the leaves falling under the trees.  I have nothing else to do but pass the time.  Maybe I will write my memoirs.  Do you want to read my memoirs?  Probably not.  You would probably prefer some fancy story about a prince who marries a princess and lives happily ever after under a 170 rainbows.  My memoirs are not going to be about princes and princes and rainbows.  My memoirs are going to be grim.  They are going to be dark and offensive and very, very disappointing and, as I said, grim.   They are going to be about real life and real death and smelly armpits and dying breaths.  You don’t want to read about that. That’s boring.  That’s not for you.

     Listen.  You had probably better stop reading now.  This is not the book for you.  This is my book and I’m going to write what I want to write and, more importantly, what I need to write.  This is not a book for summer reading while you’re sitting on your chase lounge on the beach.  This is not your book of the month romance.   This is not your light, summer page-turner that keeps you laughing until the end and leaves you with nothing.  Nah, that’s not what this is going to be.  I don’t want to lead you on in any way.  I’m just going to amuse myself, with no concerns about you or your feelings.  If you want to come along for the ride, be warned.

 

2. FRIDAY

 

Mrs. Wilkins used to tell us to write short, simple sentences.  She used to tell us to use active verbs.  “Use active verbs,” she would say in her bubbly voice.  “To make your story move along, always use active verbs.”  Are my verbs active enough so far?  Mrs. Wilkins was my sixth-grade English teacher and she was the only female I ever liked.  She had a big mole on her forehead.  When she leaned over your desk to tell you about active verbs, you would look at her mole.  But that’s not why I liked her.  I’m not sure why I liked her.  Do you know why I liked her?  I’m just kidding.  You don’t know why I liked her.  If I don’t know, why would you know?  Maybe it was her bubbly laugh.

     Or maybe I liked Mrs. Wilkins because she was kind of goofy.  Most women are vain and hysterical.  Most women think it’s their divine right to judge men.  They are always judging whether men are good or bad.  Never does it cross their minds to wonder whether they are good or bad.  But Mrs. Wilkins was different.  She never cared about who was good or bad.  She was in her own goofy world.  She only cared about active verbs and short, simple sentences.  If you wrote a nice, short, simple sentence, her eyebrows would go way up.  And the mole would to way up, too.  And she would exclaim, “Oh, my!”

     She was a big Hemingway fan.  She would almost have a goofy, short, simple orgasm when we would read one of Hemingway’s short stories and focus on his short, simple sentences.  I’m serious.  After reading one of his short, simple sentences she would sit back in her chair.  She would sigh.  She would close her eyes.  She would tremble.  She would gasp.  The earth would seem to move under her desk.  The whole class would laugh but she didn’t care.  She particularly liked his story called, “A Way You’ll Never Be.”  There was one sentence in that story that went: “There were new dead and no one had bothered with anything but their pockets.”  Her eyebrows went up and her mole went up as she seemed to taste the image of dead soldiers with their pockets out. 

Hemingway was all right.  He wrote in short, simple sentences and was sometimes real.  But often he would romanticize things and then he would he could get a little corny.  He had to romanticize things for his women readers so he could be popular and make money. 

     Since I’m going to die soon, I am going to keep it real with no concern about popularity.   I might as well write everything down for “posterity.”  I don’t believe in all that heaven and hell crap.  You have one go-around and that’s it.  It either works or it doesn’t work.   Everybody is always looking for the meaning of life.  Life doesn’t have any meaning.  It’s just a load of crap piled on another load of crap.  Who knows, maybe writing it down will give me a kind of immortality.  At any rate, it will certainly help me pass the time as well as let off some steam.  Maybe Mrs. Wilkens will read it and admire my short, simple sentences.  Maybe she will be the only one who will like it.  It amuses me to think that I’ll still be tormenting people after I’m dead. 

     I can write about white women.  I can write about how much I hate white women.  I hate all white women, except for Mrs. Wilkins.  Actually, I don’t just hate them.  I despise them.  That’s how I’m different from most men of color.  Most men of color convince themselves they love white women.  They bend over backwards trying to get the approval of white women, as if all white women were all princesses.  They go out of their way to align themselves with white women and their little white schemes.  I’m not the least bit fooled by white women and I’ll write whatever I please about them.

     I am looking out of the window now as I type.  I see a white woman on the sidewalk below.  She is walking to the main building.  She is all dressed up in a short skirt that shows her legs.  She is smiling in that happy, conceited way white women smile.  She’s so happy she’s a white woman but she wouldn’t admit that to anybody.  Look at that self-satisfied grin on her face!  I could extinguish that little grin with a simple twist of her neck and feel absolutely nothing at all.

     Men of color aren’t supposed to have these kinds of thoughts especially about white women.  It’s all right to have murderous feelings about black women, but not white women.  We’re supposed to be nice to white women.  We’re supposed to think that white women are fellow victims.  We’re supposed to think they have been discriminated against at the same level as men of color.  What a bunch of crap!  There’s actually no comparison.  In fact, when you study history, it becomes clear that white women have been given favored treatment for decades.  In fact, white women are the most privileged and cruel women of all.  And I know just what I’m talking about.  My mother was a white woman. 

     Don’t get me started about white women.  Don’t get me started about my mother.

     Do you think anybody will read this after I’m dead?  Maybe a lot of white women will read it and be appalled.  Maybe my mother will read it and be appalled.   I like that idea!  But I don’t want Mrs. Wilkens to be appalled.   I think she was the only white woman who loved me, but I couldn’t take in her love.  I never really let on how I felt about her all the time I was in her class.  I regret not telling her how I really felt about her.  I’ve told a lot of people how much I hate them, but I never told Mrs. Wilkens how much I love her.  I couldn’t take in her love and I couldn’t tell her I loved her.  I guess I as blocked.

     They say if you can’t be loved, the next best thing is to be hated.  In fact, people seem to have much stronger feelings toward people they hate than they do toward people they love.  Have you ever noticed that?  No, you probably haven’t.  You only see what you want to see.  My ability to love and be loved was blocked, so I went for the next best thing.  I went for hate.

     Getting love is hard.  When I was younger, I tried to get love from my mother. 

     “Mommy, do you love me?” I would ask her over and over.

     She would always laugh when I asked her that.

     “Why should I love you?” she would ask.  “Because you’re colored?”

     “No.”

     “Because you’re bad?”

     “No.”

     “Then why should I love you?  Tell me?”

     “I don’t know.”

     “Well, if you don’t know, then I certainly don’t know.”

     I couldn’t get her love, no matter how hard I tried.  But it was easy to get her hate.

     Yes, yes, yes.  If I could only have one wish, it would be to be truly and absolutely hated after my death.

 

3. SATURDAY

 

Fritz once said to me “You have the eyes of a choirboy.

     “And you have the eyes of an orangutan,” I replied.

     “What’s a orangutan?” Fritz asked.

     “An animal from Mars.”

     “Mars?  You’re funny.  Hahaha.”

     When Fritz laughed, he laughed without laughing.  Fritz is the man who watches over me.  He is a funny man.  He is one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen.  He is tall but afraid to be tall.  He is shaped like an egg.  His head is small and his legs are skinny and his hips are huge.  It is as if his fear of being tall caused him to shift his weight downward.  His face is also strange; his ears are almost as wide as his face.  His eyes always look jolly and are sunk deep in their sockets like two glowing beams.  His forehead hangs over his eyes like a craggy cliff.

     “You are writing again.  You are always writing.  What are you writing?” Fritz asked.

     “I’m writing a love story,” I said.  “I am calling it ‘Fritz on the Beach.’  It is all about how you go to the beach one day and fall in love.”

     “I’m not going to fall in love,” Friz says.  “I’m married.”

     “Maybe you’ll go to beach with your wife and fall in love with her.”

     “You’re funny.  Hahaha.”    

     Fritz smirks at me as I write these short, simple sentences.  He doesn’t know what to think of these short simple sentences.  However, he is quite jolly about these short, simple sentences.  He is jolly about everything.  He is jolly knowing he has a good, secure job.  He is especially jolly about me, knowing I am going to die and he will live forever.  (So he thinks!)

     “Tell me, Fritz,” I ask him.  “What do you think of short, simple sentences?”

     “I don’t think anything, Bobby,” he replies, waving me away.  “If you like them, then I like them.”   He chuckles with a great deal of jollity.  I flash my choirboy smile.

     “No, really.  I’d like your feedback.  Do you think it’s best to write in short-simple sentences?  Or do you think it’s best to write in long, complicated sentences?”

     “You should write whatever you want, Bobby.”

     “I’m talking about short, simple sentences, Fritz.  Think about it.   Do you think it’s best to write in short, simple sentences? Please tell me your opinion.”

     “I think whatever you write and however you write it will be good, Bobby.”

     “How do you know it will be good?”

     “Because you are a very smart guy, and so, I’m sure you will write good sentences.”

     “You’re sure of that?”

     “Yes, I’m sure.  Goodbye, now.”

     Fritz doesn’t know what to make of me.  Most people don’t know what to make of me.  Maybe I don’t want people to know what to make of me.

     Psychologists are always trying to understand why people kill.  They say people kill because they are born with bad genes.  Or they say people kill because they’ve had a bad childhood.  Or they say people kill because they’ve got a chemical imbalance.  Or they say people kill because they got fired from their job at the Post Office.  Or they say people kill because they have too many violent fantasies.   No, that’s not it.  That’s all psychobabble bull.  There’s only one reason why people kill.  It’s very simple.  People kill because they enjoy it.  It’s just another addiction like drinking or gambling.  You get high when you do it, and after a while you need that high more and more.  That’s all it is, another kind of high.

     My friend, the woodpecker, has begun to peck very loudly.  Now that I am looking at him, he stands with his back to me and his beak turned away.  Perhaps he is giving me a cold beak.  Perhaps he knows how agitated I am and he is trying to calm me down.  Maybe he senses what a cold-blooded freak I am.  It is a cloudy morning and I have finished my breakfast of eggs and bacon and I am still here and the woodpecker is still here.  The woodpecker is on his dead branch and I am on my dead wooden chair.  He is pecking and I am typing.  He is pecking in short, simple pecks and I am typing short, simple sentences.

     Killing is not that unusual.  It happens and then it is over.  Usually afterwards you don’t even remember what happened. It’s like you were drunk, but you weren’t drunk.  I can remember the first time and I can remember the last time, but all the rest are a blur.  All the rest are like ghost neurons whispering somewhere in my brain.  (Did you like that phrase, Mrs. Wilkens?)  All I know is that I feel better afterwards.  I feel relieved and ready to go. They say a lion needs to kill one antelope a week.  I need to kill one white woman a month.  The rage slowly builds and then I need a release.

     Mostly I remember the last time.  I remember Jenny.  She said she would haunt my dreams, and she was right.  I think about her almost every day and every night. The other night I dreamed she broke into my cell and had a knife in her hand.  She walked over to my bed with a smile on her face and was about to stab me.  Then I woke up.  I often wonder about her.  I wonder why she wanted to marry me.

     I think maybe I’m going to get a stroke or a brain tumor.  Maybe I am going to have a heart attack.   I have headaches all the times.  I have pains in my shoulders and lower back.  My back is so stiff it seems like an armored plate is right under my skin.  My throat is always sore and my hemorrhoids are always pulsing.  Sometimes the muscles in my thighs tighten up so much I can’t walk.   I’m afraid I’m getting lung cancer.  I’m afraid I’m getting pancreatic cancer.  I’m afraid I’m getting intestinal cancer.  I’m afraid I’m getting prostate cancer.  I know what it is.  Is the buildup of the rage.  It has built up here in this cell and has no place to go so it is attacking my body.

     I remember Reverend Kohler.  He was my preacher when I lived in Kansas City.  He didn’t know anything about me and he was convinced I was a good person.  He never talked to me about good and evil or heaven or hell.

Instead, he would ask my advice about things. “Do you think water-based paint is as durable as oil-based paint?” he would ask.

     We were panting the church and I didn’t know a thing about paint but he always thought I knew things. 

    “I think it depends a what you’re painting.” I answered.

    “That sounds right,” he said.

     “The paint needs to fit the job.  That’s the main thing.”

     “That makes sense, Bobby.”

     “Each job needs a particular kind of paint.  Some need oil-based paint.  Some need water-based paint.  That’s what it is.”

     “Thanks, Bobby.”

     “You’re welcome, Reverend.”

     Reverend Kohler had no idea of who I really was.  My wife had no idea of who I really was.  My kids had no idea of who I really was.  Only one person ever really knew.  Jenny.

     I’m looking out of the window at the hill.   It is cloudy on top of the hill.  I imagine myself walking on the hill.  I imagine myself getting a sunburn.  I have heard that you can get a sunburn on a cloudy day.  Have you ever gotten a sunburn on a cloudy day?  Many people get sunburns on cloudy days, but many others get sunburns on sunny days.  Then again, many others never get sunburns at all.  People of color usually don’t get sunburns.  But I am a light-skinned man of color and I do get sunburns at times.  It is very interesting to think about sunburns, isn’t it?  It is interesting to think about whether you get sunburns on cloudy days or sunny days or even in the winter.   It is interesting to think about how the color of your skin affects your sunburn capability.  It is certainly more interesting to think about sunburns than about death.  Death is not that interesting.

     You’re stalling.  Get on with your story.

  

4. MONDAY NIGHT

 

It’s midnight and I can’t sleep.  I guess I’ll write something.  Maybe that will help me to sleep.

     The first person I offed was a whore named Jade.  I remember I was full of rage that night.  The rage had built up over several weeks because of arguments with my wife and with people at my job.  Almost every moment I was driving, I was yelling at my wife and my boss and various others.  Then I saw Jade.  I found out later from the news that her real name was Rose Ann Corsina.  Actually, she looked more like a Rose Ann Corsina than a Jade.  If she was going to name herself after a stone, it shouldn’t have been Jade.  She was more like a fieldstone or gypsum. 

     I was driving around in my black Nisson Altima that night looking for someone to pick up.  The black Altima was my hunting car; it was less visible at night.  As I pulled off the freeway, Jade was standing on a curb near the exit ramp of I64.  She was smiling and waving to the cars that were coming off the ramp.  She was amazing.

     She was obviously white trash to the hilt.  She was trying to hide her age behind a lot of makeup.  My mother used to do that when she started getting older.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Jade’s makeup was truly incredible.  Her face was almost like a clown face.  Her lipstick was painted outside her lips to make her mouth bigger. Her eye shadow went to her eyebrows. The powder on her cheeks was so thick it looked like she had fallen on a cake.  Her blouse was about three sizes too small, and you could see nearly all of both tits, which were obviously silicone.  You could also see her pudgy belly.

     As I pulled up, she saw me look at her tits and smiled.  “So, you like my big tits, dear,” she said.  “Of course you do.”  I could see the conceit in her smile.  She was a typical white woman.  Even if a white woman is a whore, she still thinks she’s superior to any man, especially a colored man.  That’s the way they are. 

     “Would you like a date, dear,” she asked, giving me what she thought was a sexy glint.

     “Maybe.  How much for a blow job?”

     “For you, forty bucks, because you’re cute.”

     I took her to Cross Hill.  It was called Cross Hill because some religious bigot had put a wooden cross up there years ago.  That’s where I usually took them.  You could see the city lights and the stars and the moon from there.  It had rained earlier that day and you could smell the damp grass.  But the nice smells didn’t last too long.  The smell of Jade’s cheap perfume and her sweaty body became quite prominent and I had to open the window.  It was a cool night in May, 1984.  The breeze shot into the car.  But the open window didn’t help much because her perfume still reeked of dead roses and of whoever she had been with before.

     She didn’t lose any time.  As soon as I stopped the car she went down on me and unzipped my fly.  “Let’s see what’s you’ve got, Honey,” she snickered.  “Are you a big boy?”  She kept talking to me like I was a kid.  I look young for my age, but she was acting like I was about three years old.  She was acting as if she were some divine mother-figure and not a whore.  She was ridiculous but she had no clue how ridiculous she was.  Ridiculous people never know how ridiculous they are, and the more ridiculous they are, the more clueless they are.

     “Is there a problem, Honey,” she said after a few minutes.  Her head was bobbing up and down.  She stopped to look up.  “Is there a something wrong?  Have you been drinking?  Relax, dear.  Just relax.  Cum.  Cum for Mama.”  I was getting more and more annoyed.  Her head bobbed a while longer and she sat up and looked at me as if I were a stubborn child.  “Sweetie, my mouth’s getting tired.  Are you going to cum soon?”

     “Maybe.”

     “Maybe?”  She stared at me.  I enjoyed playing with her.  “You’re not going to cum?  OK.  Let’s just forget about it.  Just give me twenty.”  She started straightening herself.  “OK, Honey?”

     “No, it’s not OK.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “I mean I’m not going to give you twenty.”

     I enjoyed seeing it dawn on her that she was not in control.  I enjoyed seeing her eyes look at me with confusion as she realized the kid was not really a kid.  She immediately changed from mother earth to the alley cat she really was.  I pushed the door lock button and she began yanking on the handle of the door, trying to open it.  Now why do people do that?  They start yanking on the door handles after they clearly see that the locks are down.  She opened her mouth to scream and I cupped my hand over her lips.  Then she surprised me.  She was feisty.  She was biting and scratching.  I remember her fingernails were red, white and blue.  I was thinking, “What a patriotic whore!”  She was amazing.

     The funny thing is that while I was choking her, I was looking out the window and noticing that it was a serene, starry night.  I was choking Jade but I wasn’t paying any attention to her.  The moon, the trees, even the cross were more interesting.  I remember thinking it was a little eerie.  Everything was peaceful outside the car and inside she was screaming and kicking and scratching away at me.  But the windows were closed so we didn’t disturb the moon or the stars.

     Afterwards I dragged her body by the legs into the thicket.  I felt no remorse.  I was actually thinking that I had done this pathetic person a good turn.  I had taken her out of her misery.  Her life was simply going to be a nightmare and I ended the nightmare.  I didn’t have a shovel in the car so I had to bury her under some loose dirt and leaves.  They found her a few days later.  I saw it on the news.  That’s when I found out her real name was Rose Ann Corsina.  After that I always kept a shovel in the trunk of the car.  There were 22 in all and from then on, I was always prepared.  Live and learn, as they say.  Or, perhaps I should say, “Kill and learn.”  I felt nothing for Jade, and my rage went away soon after she stopped moving.  I remember the song on the radio as I drove back to the turnpike.  It was “Maniac.”  I was singing along with it at the top of my voice, but I was changing the words.  Instead of singing, “She’s a maniac!” I was singing, “I’m a maniac!”

     That was my first experience with what I call a “killer’s high.”  I’d heard hunters talk about the excitement they felt and the high they got after they shot a deer.  That’s how I felt but ten times higher.  I felt empowered and joyful and at peace, all at the same time.  I wasn’t at all tense anymore.  My headache disappeared and my neck, shoulder and lower back had loosened up considerably.  Some people jog when they are feeling tense but jogging never did anything for me.  Killing is what does it for me.  If I ever write a book about how to relieve anxiety, I would recommend a good killing once a month.  After that first killing, I was addicted.

     I guess you think I’m pretty evil, right.  Don’t judge me.  I didn’t choose to be evil.  People don’t choose to be who they are.  It is a matter of luck.  You are born with good or bad genes or you are born rich or poor.  Instead of judging me, you should judge yourself.  “Judge not, lest you be judged,” Jesus said.  I’m not religious, but I thought Jesus said some pretty smart things.

     I think it was about 6 am when I drove home.  My house was on a suburban street where all the houses glistened with carpet grass and shiny red brick and white plastic siding.   I was the only man of color in the neighborhood, but the white neighbors tolerated me because my skin was not that dark and I had a white wife.  When we moved in, they all acted like they were tickled pink to have a man of color in the neighborhood.  They literally did backward somersaults to prove how liberal they were.  It was amazing.

     The house was a ranch tyle house with a double garage.  I didn’t park in the garage, because I didn’t want to wake Lily up.  I parked down the block and tiptoed across the backyard, past the above-ground swimming pool we bought for the kids and into the back door.  I had a routine.  I would sneak into the bedroom and take off my clothes in the dark.  But it never worked.  Suddenly the lamp flicked on and Lily would sit up in bed.  My wife was an attractive girl.  She had long brown hair.  It was usually dangling down the front of her white negligee.  She was pure and sweet compared to someone like Jade.  She usually bleached her bangs blond.

     Lily was my high school sweetheart.  She was the first girl I had sex with.  I mean, she was the first girl with whom I had sex. (OK, Mrs. Wilkens?). We had gotten married a few weeks after graduation.  She had one of those dependent personalities and she accepted practically anything I did.  I guess that’s why I married her.  Even though she had that dependent personality and did anything I said, I never felt anything for her or for my kids.  It was a pretend marriage and a pretend life.  I never let on to her, though, how I really felt.  Come to think of it, I’ve never let on to anybody how I really felt.  This diary may be the first time I’ve even let myself know how I feel about everything.

     That night I stood in the bedroom as my clothes dropped to the floor and smiled at my wife as though nothing at all had happened.

     “What time is it?” she asked.

     “About 6 am,” I said.

     “Where have you been?”

     She wasn’t angry.  She was just concerned about me and was talking in a sweat, unassuming voice.   She always assumed that I was a loving, trustworthy husband.

     “I’ve been driving” I said.

     “All night.”

     “Yeah.”

     “Why?  Why were you driving all night?”

     “I was feeling tense.  I like to drive when I’m feeling tense.  You know how I am.  You know I like to drive when I’m tense.”

     “What were you tense about?”

     “Nothing much.  My job, things like that.”  I never told her I was tense about her.  “I was just tense.”

     “I was concerned about you.”

     “Why”

     “The last time you went driving, you ended up in Los Vegas and didn’t come home for three months.”

     “That was then.  This is now.   I just needed to drive.  I’m sorry.”

     “Well, if it relieves your tension OK.  I just wish you’d call and let me know.”  She noticed the scratch on my face.  “What’s that?”

     “Oh, I saw this stray cat and I thought maybe I’d bring it home for the kids.  But it scratched me and I had to let it go.”

     “How sweet.  You’re always thinking about the kids, even when you’re feeling tense.”  She walked over and kissed the scratch.

     “Let’s get some sleep,” I said.

     “What about church?  Are you going to skip out on church again?

     “I’ll go.  Just let me get a few hours of shut-eye.”

    Then I heard the kids.  For some reason they were awake and wide-eyed as soon as a ray of sun hit their room.  The next thing I knew, there was the sound of little feet and giggling coming from the hallway.  My five-year-old girl and three-year-old boy scampered into the room.  They began jumping noisily on the bed, making the springs squeak. 

     Lou-Lou was jumping up and down right near me and fell into my arms.  “Daddy!  Daddy!  Daddy!”

     Bobby, jr. as usual, followed suit.  “It’s Daddy!”

    The bed was shaking.  I grabbed them in my arms.  “Stop it!” Lily said, shushing them.  “Daddy has to get some sleep before church.”

     Even though I was tired, I smiled at the kids and pretended to love them.  The kids had been Lily’s idea.  To me they were just something that had happened to me.  Fatherhood was something I had just gone alone with.  It was good for my image.  “Well, well, well.  Look who’s up already,” I said to Lou-Lou.

     Lou-Lou stood over me, hands on hips, with a pout on her face.  She thought she was already a lady.  “Daddy, where have you been?” she asked.

     “Daddy, had to do something,” Lily said.

     Lou-Lou stuck her finger at me.  “You are very naughty!”

     “Let Daddy get some sleep now,” Lily said.

     Lou-Lou jumped on me and held me.  “No!  No!  No!  No sleep for naughty Daddy.”

     “No sleep for Daddy!” Bobby, Jr. cackled.

     The kids both wrestled me down and sat on me.

     Lily pulled them away.  “I said, let Daddy sleep!  Come.”

     She took the kids out of the room and shut the door.  As soon as they were gone, I was out.  I have never had trouble sleeping.

     By night I was a wolf hunting down prey.  By day I was a respectable citizen.  I even had a respectable job, working as a short-order cook in a neighborhood diner.  In case you want to know.  It was one of those old-fashioned diners that resembled a railroad car.  By Monday, when I went back to work, I had a friendly smile on my face and was the jokester everybody loved.  I whistled while I flipped the pancakes.  Frank, the owner, was like a father to me.  He was a fat, happy-go-lucky guy who loved owning a diner, which was called, “Frank’s Place.”  When he saw me, Frank said, “Oh, you’re back to yourself again.”   I had been my dark, argumentative self the week before and had smashed a dish in a fit of anger.   Now I was in a good mood.  The regulars came in and everybody was joking around. 

     “Hey!” I joked.  “Why did the cookie go to the doctor?”

     “Why, Bobby?  Do tell us why,” a customer asked.

     “It felt crummy,” I said.  It was a joke my kids had told me.

     Everybody laughed.

     Frank took me by the shoulders.  “How do you manage to stay so cheerful?” Frank asked.

     “I’m not always cheerful,” I said.  “I wasn’t cheerful last week.”

     “Well, you get into moods like everybody else.

     “I do.”

     “Bobby, you don’t have a dishonest bone in your body!”

     I had them all fooled.  People are easy to con.  They’re eager to believe whatever you want them to believe.  They wanted to believe I was this exemplary man of color.  I heartily played the role.  I went right along with whatever they wanted me to be.

 

5. THURSDAY 

 

I wasn’t feeling particularly tense the day I met Jenny.  I had had a fun day at work and I was just going to go home and have a beer.  But then I saw the billboard.  It was on the corner of Elm and Main Street.  It was one of these public service advertisements about battered women, showing a row of women’s faces with blackened eyes, bloodied noses and assorted bruises.  The caption below announced, “Every 7 seconds a woman is beaten.”

     When I saw that ad, I had to laugh. They made it seem like there was some kind of war against women.  Like all the men in America were going around beating up women.  What a farce!

     Once I saw that sign, my mood completely changed.  And then I began to hear my mother’s voice. 

     She used to go on and on about how men abuse women and if I said a word to the contrary, she would threaten to send me back to reform school.  All at once her voice was in some corner of my head.  Her rasping tone was in my inner ears like a jackhammer rattling away.  I could feel a headache coming on.  “Don’t you dare!” my mother’s voice was jackhammering.  “Don’t you dare put down women.  Do you want me to send you back to the home?  Is that what you want!  You’re so selfish!  You’re becoming another selfish, sexist man like your father.  Do you know why I divorced him right after you were born?  Do you know?  I didn’t want him to contaminate you!  For thousands of years!  For thousands of years women were raped, murdered, and pillaged.  For thousands of years they were maimed, robbed, sabotaged, cheated, hogtied and ground into sausage.  For thousands of years they were deceived, misperceived and teased.  For thousands of years they were mocked, hammer-locked and deadlocked.   They were forced to eat too much pork and get fat.  They were forced to drink too much booze and get depressed.  They were driven to smoke too much and get lung cancer.  They were forced to sleep with their disgusting husbands.   They were imprisoned in domestic slavery and ordered to wipe the snot off the noses of their children.  All the time they were yearning to be free to work in offices where they could do important tasks like maintain files about plumbing fixtures and organize various kinds of plastic bags.  They were forced to be understanding and empathic toward men.  They were forced to wear dresses and cook sweet potato stews.  For thousands of years!  For thousands of years women were prevented from smoking cigars or using men’s restrooms or talking about sex or having affairs or going to war and shooting people.  Don’t you dare talk about women!  How could I have such an evil little son!  What did you say?  What?  Did you just call me the B-word?  Tomorrow you’re going back to the home.  Pack your things.  Pack them right now.  You’re disgusting!  You are a mean, disgusting little boy!”

     “Get out of my head, you bitch!” I am yelling as I try to drive my Altima SL down the road. 

     “For a thousand years!”

     “Get out!”

     “No, I won’t get out.  You are my son!  You are my flesh!  I gave birth to you!  I own you!  You are part of me!”

     “Get out!” I scream.

     “Every 7 seconds!”

     “That’s bullshit!”

     “How can you say such things about women?  You are hurting women’s feelings.  You are hurting my feelings!”

     “Maybe their feelings need to be hurt.  Maybe they are hurting men’s feelings and maybe they need to know that!”

     “For thousands of years!”

     “Stop it!  You’re driving me crazy!”

     I pull over to the shoulder.  My tires are squealing.  My mother’s voice is jack-hammering.  Traffic is speeding to my right.  A bum is peeing in the trees to my left.

     “What a jerk my son is!”

     “Shut up!”

     “I won’t shut up.  For thousands of years!”

     “Shut up!”

     “As a black man you should know better.”

     “Get out of my head!”

     I am holding my hands against my ears, hoping to stop the noise.  But nothing can ever stop her. 

     “You want me to get out of your head?  Is that what you want?”

     “Yes, that’s what I want.”

     “Fine.  But I promise you that the ridiculous, sexist trash you are writing will never be published.”

     “I don’t care if it gets published.  I’m writing this for myself.”

     “You’re dangerous!  You’re scary!”

     “Right.”

     “You’re toxic.”

     “Exactly.”

     “You’ll never get published.”

     “Shut up.”

     Her voice begins to fade.  I am willing it to fade. 

     “For thousands of years.”

     “No.”

     “Women have suffered.”

     “No.”

     “Every 7 seconds.”

     “No.”

     “Every.”

     “No.”

     Ah.  At last, the voice has stopped.  I’ve won.

     That’s the good thing about writing your own book.  You can win all the arguments in your book.  Isn’t that wonderful?  You can write short, simple sentences and you can win all the arguments, even the ones with your mother you could never win before.  Do you like winning arguments?  What’s that?  You think I’m rude?  You think I’m rude to my mother?  You think a man should always respect women.  You think men should always let a woman get in the last word?  Sorry, but I respectfully disagree.  If women want equality, then they can’t always have the last word.  At least half the time men should have the last word, don’t you think? 

     Anyway, back to the story.  As I said, it was an ordinary day until I saw that billboard.   Then I remembered my mother and got into a rage.  I had to sit in my car, which I had parked on the shoulder.  I sat there for a few minutes to compose myself.  I shook my head a few times to shake my mother’s voice out of me.  I sighed.  I took a few deep breaths.  Then I started the car and drove down the street and stopped at Bill’s Deli.  I often went there on my way home for a Corona.  Fred, a tall, skinny young guy who still combed his hair in duck tails, gave me the usual grin and fist pump.    

     “Hey, Bobby, how’s it going?”

     “Great, Fred.  How’s it going with you?”

     “Not bad.  Business is a bit slow.”

     “Well, it’s Friday.  People are going home for the weekend.”

     After the irritating billboard, it was good to have some male companionship.  Fred gave me his easy, uncomplicated smile and we touched fists.

     “Where are you headed?”

     “I going home.  My wife and kids are waiting for me.”

     “Lucky man.”

     “How about you?  Where are you headed?”

     “I think I’ll close up soon and swing by Larry’s.”

     “Have a good evening.”

     “You too.”

     I went back out to my car and drove down Miller’s Road, taking a few swigs of the beer.  I had calmed down considerably.  That’s when I saw Jenny.   She was standing at the end of the road.  She was right there on the corner with her thumb in the air, smiling cutely as the passing cars.

 

6. THURSDAY EVENING

 

For some stupid reason, I can remember every detail about the first sight of her.  She was standing on the side of I71 wiggling her thumb.  She was wearing white shorts and a yellow T-shirt.  As I got closer, I could make out the words on the T-shirt.  “Pretty Girl” was printed across her chest.  She had the thin body of an adolescent.  Her tits were small, as if just starting to bloom.  You could just see two tiny bumps in the T-shirt.  Her smile and her raised eyebrows seemed to be saying, “Aren’t I pretty?” as she eagerly stuck her thumb in the air.  She looked cute but she also looked scared, vulnerable and submissive.  Perfect, I thought.

     I’m usually not taken in by pretty girls, but I have to admit her face was quite pretty in a teen-aged way.  She had that innocent, fresh pubescent look, with wide-eyed, trusting blue eyes, which had large pupils like doll eyes.  Her face was framed by long dirty blond hair.  She had full lips and a row of even, white teeth.  Those teeth, I came to realize, were nearly always displayed in a winsome smile.  There was only one thing wrong with her face.  It had too much makeup.  Her eyeliner was too thick and her lipstick too bright and too red.  Without even knowing her I had the impulse to wipe the makeup off her face.  The makeup reminded me of my mother, and that was a complete turnoff.  I could see her good looks beneath the makeup and it was a shame to have it covered up with that gunk.

     I pulled up alongside her and gave her my charming smile.  I have always had that smile.  I don’t know where I got it, but I have always been able to charm people with it.  When she saw my smile, she stopped wiggling her thumb and ran up to my car like some puppy dog.  Her tongue was sticking out.  I opened the window and leaned out.

     “Where are you headed?” I asked.

     She stepped toward the window and greeted me in a girlishly flirtatious manner.  She was funny.  She was gazing directly into my eyes.  Her blue doll’s eyes were glistening like two agates.  Her brows were way up on her forehead.  Her hands were pressed together in a mock prayer.  Her little adolescent hip was protruding from within her white shorts.  You could see that she thought she was a cutie.  She didn’t know that all this girlish stuff was wasted on me. 

     “Hi.  Are you going my way?!!” she almost sang out.

     “That depends.  Where are you going?”

     “I’m not sure.  Miami, I think.”

     “You think?”

     “I want to go someplace where there’s a beach, and I have an uncle in Miami.”

     “Where’s your suitcase?”

     “That’s a long story.”

     “I can take you as far as St. Louis.”

     “Really.  That would be neat.  Thanks a lot.”

     I opened the passenger door and she came around and started to get in.  Then she hesitated.  She was just a little bit suspicious.  “Can I trust you?” she asked.  She was still smiling in that flirtatious way, but with a glint of fear.  “I mean, you’re not some kind of axe-murderer, are you?  I’m just joking with you!”  Her mouth was a big smile, but she didn’t get right into the car.

     People always try to cover their real intentions with jokes.  Freud wrote a lot about this.  People are always making jokes so that you think they’re not saying what they are saying.  I don’t go in for psychobabble, but I think Freud was on to something.  I’ve always been interested in psychology and I used to read Freud all night when I was in reform school.  How about you?  Did you ever read Freud?  You probably haven’t read Freud, but you probably think you know more than he did.  People are funny. Even though they haven’t read any psychology and even though they try to hide their intentions from themselves, they still think they understand other people better than you do.

     I grinned at Jenny in my charming, reassuring way.  Sometimes I can look like an All-American boy.  “Of course,” I said.  “I just chopped up a woman in Missouri the other night with a huge pick-axe.”  That disarmed her.  She laughed and got right into the car.  I held out my hand.  “I’m Bobby.  I live here in Kansas City.”  She reached out to shake my hand.  The silver bangles on her thin, girlish wrist jingled.  The fingers of both hands were also decorated with silver rings.  There were even rings on her thumbs.  She sat down on the seat and closed the door.  As soon as she sat down, she turned to me and smiled brightly.  She seemed relieved.  She seemed as if she were ready to be my best friend.  All you have to do is laugh in an easy, casual way and act like a normal, everyday guy.  People want to trust you.

     “Hi.  I’m Jenny.  Glad to meet you, Bobby.”

     “Glad to meet you, Jenny.”

     I took off down the turnpike.  The evening sun was hanging against the horizon.  The moon was wafting on the other side of the sky.  (I’m throwing in a bit of description here for Mrs. Wilkens.)

     For a few seconds there was an awkward silence.  But it was only for a few seconds.  Jenny never met a silence she couldn’t fill.  About a mile down the turnpike she started humming.  First, she hummed a bit tentatively.  She smiled at me as if to ask, “Is it OK?”  I smiled back as if to say, “It’s all right.”  I was smiling acceptingly and at the same time wondering where I would take her.  I had no intention of taking her to St. Louis.  I was thinking of Cross Mountain.   After I gave her the green light, she started humming more loudly.

     “Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” she asked.

     “Go ahead.”

     She turned it on and began pushing buttons until she found a song she liked.  She immediately sang along.  It was the song, “You Are So Beautiful.”

     She sang shyly at first, but her voice grew freer as we drove along.  Then she suddenly turned all the way around in her seat to smile at me.  She was smiling like a co-conspirator, like we had just robbed a bank together and were in our getaway car.

     “I feel happy!” she blurted out.

     “Why’s that?”

     “I don’t know.  I guess it’s because I’m getting away from Kansas City.”

     “Who are you running away from, Jenny?”

     “How do you know I’m running away?”

     “It’s not hard to figure out.  Is it your father?  Your mother?  Your stepfather?”

     “My Mom and I don’t get along.  She’s kind of a religious nut.  It’s no big deal.  This is the third time I’ve run away.”  She glanced fearfully at me.  “You’re not going to take me back, are you?”

     “No.”

     “That’s good.”  She gave me a humongous smile and continued humming the song.  She kept glancing at me as she hummed.  “Hey, you know, you’re kind of cute, Bobby.  I like older men, especially older black men.  I don’t know why.  For some reason I find older black men to be fatherly.  I never really had a father.”

     “I’m not a black man,” I quickly let her know.  “I’m mixed.  I had a colored father but a white mother.”  I get a little ticked when people call me black.  

     “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean anything, It’s just that your skin…”

     “It’s OK.  American’s always call anybody with dark skin black.  What happened to your father, Jenny?”

     “He ran off soon after I was born.  Anyway, I don’t want to talk about him.  Tell me about yourself?  What’s in St. Louis?”

     “I’m going to visit a friend,” I lied.  I was just biding my time.

     “And what do you do, Bobby?”

     “I’m a short-order cook.  I work at Frank’s Diner on Water Street.”

     She suddenly sat up and clapped her hands.  She was funny.  I had to laugh at that.  It was so typically adolescent.  “Oh, how neat!  I know that diner.  It’s not too far from my school.  My friends and I go there sometimes for lunch.  Wow!  We probably saw each other and didn’t even know it!”

     “Jung would have called that synchronistic.”

     “Who?”

     “Jung.  He was a psychoanalyst.  He thought some coincidences were like, well, fate.”

     “Like us meeting today?”  Her brows went up.

     “Maybe.”

     She hummed again for a few minutes.  I gazed at her and noticed how white and smooth her face was.

     “How old are you, Jenny?”

     “Eighteen.”

     “No, you’re not.  How old, really?  Fifteen?  Sixteen?”

     “I told you, eighteen.  I look young for my age.”

     “I don’t believe you.”

     “How old are you?”

     “I’m twenty-seven.”

     “That’s a nice age.”

     She flashed her adolescent, flirtatious smile—a smile that was both seductive and vulnerable at the same time.  There was no hesitation in her mouth, and she had this trait of sticking out her tongue when she smiled.  The teeth were right out there, holding the tongue.  Her little, pink tongue darted just a little past her teeth.  The darting tongue was like an invitation to hop and skip or dance.  At the same time her eyes were staring a little too hard.  They were smiling too hard and leaking out flickers of fear.  You had to look closely to see the fear.  She hid it well, even from herself.  The fear was camouflaged by her cuteness.  She knew she was cute and she used her cuteness to appease me, keep me from being too threatening.  A lot of girls are like that.  She kept smiling at me, darting her tongue, trying to humor me.  But all I could muster was a faint smile.  Flirtatious women usually annoy me.

     “I’m glad you think twenty-seven is a good age,” I said.  “I told you how old I am.  Now tell me how old you are.”

     “I told you!  Eighteen.  Don’t I look eighteen?”  She cocked her head and smiled cutely again.  She wouldn’t let up.

     “You look like you’re trying to look eighteen.  You shouldn’t wear so much makeup.”

     Her hurt feelings were hidden behind an expression of mock defiance.  “I don’t wear too much makeup!  All my friends wear makeup.  It’s the style nowadays.  I think you’re an old-fashioned guy, Bobby.  Are you old-fashioned?”

     “Not really.”

     “You are, but you don’t want to admit it.  Nobody wants to admit they’re old-fashioned.”  She was jostling in her seat, dancing from the waist up to the music from the radio.  She smiled at me again, from the corner of her eyes.  It was a mischievous smile.  “Hey.  Would you like to stop somewhere and fool around?”

     I had to smile at that.  She was serious.  “You want to fool around?”

     “Sure.  Listen, I’ll tell you what.  If you’ll take me to Miami, I’ll fuck you!”

     “You shouldn’t use language like that.”

     “You’re acting just like my mom.  What about it?  Is it a deal?”  She flashed that wide-eyed, mischievous smile again, and stuck out her tongue for good measure. 

     I kept my eyes on the road.  I was feeling annoyed, but I didn’t let on.  Women’s conceit always annoys me.  She thought she could just smile at me and stick out her tongue and I’d want to have sex with her.  They act like they are your best friend.  They act like they have known you forever.  They act like at one time you were in their womb.  It’s true.  All women act like at one time all men were babies in their wombs.  They smile at you the way they smile at babies.  They expect you to smile back like some puling infant.  But it’s all a game.  The smiles, the flirtatiousness, the gentle touches on the arm, are all phony.  They do it to control you.

     I stepped on the gas.  The more she smiled at me, the more I wanted to hurt her.  I was heading for Cross Hill.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when we got there.  It was a place where I had already killed several women.  But I wasn’t really thinking about killing.  I was thinking about raping her, humiliating her.  For some reason, when she used the word “fuck,” it made me sick in my stomach.  I wanted to do something to knock her down from her pristine perch.  But I didn’t let on how I felt.  I kept smiling casually.

     “So, are you a hooker, Jenny?” I asked after a while.

     “What?”  She pretended to be shocked.  “No!”  She sat up again and stared at me.  “Just because I offered to fuck you doesn’t make me a hooker!”

     “Sorry.”

     “Well, let’s put it this way.  When I ran away the last time, I met some men who were willing to be generous in exchange for my cute company.  I mean, if men are willing to be generous and pay for my cute company, then why not?   Don’t you think I’m cute, Bobby?”  She was posing, curling one arm over her head and the other on her chest, smiling perkily.  I grinned and bore it.  I had an image in my head of strangling her.   I had an image of strangling her and seeing that saccharine smile fade into terror.  “I can be a very nice companion, if you know what I mean,” she went on.  “I like men and men tend to like me.  I think of myself as a sort of American geisha.  Do you know about the geisha girls in Japan?  They’re trained to entertain men.  Some people think they’re like prostitutes, but they’re not.  They’re really very talented and intelligent entertainers but they only entertain one person at a time.  Would you like me to entertain you, Bobby?  Would you like me to be your geisha girl?  Would you like me to sing for you?”  She pulled her T-shirt over her nose and smiled from the corners of her eyes.  The tongue came out again.

     “Not right now.”

     “Someday I’m going to be a famous singer,” she stated, with determination in her eyes.  “I’m going to try out for American Idol.  Do you ever watch that show, Bobby?  I’m going to try out for “American Idol” and I’m going to win.  My friends laugh at me when I tell them that.  It’s OK.  Madonna’s family laughed at her too.  But I’m determined.”

     She was unstoppable when she made up her mind about something.  She turned off he radio and sat up to sing.  Her face was suddenly serious.  She began to sing, “You Are So Beautiful” in a sweet, lyrical voice.  I could see that she possessed oodles of talent and charm.  In fact, she was even more charming than she knew.  Adolescent girls give off so much sexual heat because their hormones have just kicked in.  Of course, I wasn’t charmed by her.  I despise obvious flirtation.  But I could see how charming she might have been to other people.  She was singing with a combination of waif like innocence and a soulful sadness.  She looked into my eyes as she sang.  Even though her singing annoyed me, I had to admit she had something.  Those doll’s eyes could be like searchlights.  They could seek and melt hearts.  Her crystal clear, fragile young voice would make some people swoon, for sure.  She kept looking right at me as she sang, and I kept looking away.  I didn’t want her to see how much her singing was annoying me.

     The song seemed to last forever, even though she only sang the chorus:  

    

               You are so beautiful…to me.

               You are so beautiful…to me.

               You’re everything I hoped for,

               Everything I need

               You are so beautiful…to me.

 

     After she had finally finished the song, she raised her brows and grinned like some puppy eager for a bone.  “So?   What do you think, Bobby?  Will I be famous?” 

     I knew she had what it took to be famous, but I didn’t want to say anything.  “Anything’s possible.”

     “Thanks a lot.  Don’t worry.  I’ll still speak to you after I become famous!”

    “Nice of you!”

     “I might even fuck you.”

     “I told you, don’t talk like that.”

     “OK, Bobby.  I might even have sex with you.  How’s that.”

     “That’s better.”

     “So, is it a deal, Bobby?  Are we going to Miami?”

     “I’ll think about it.”

     “When my mom says she’ll think about something, she means she’s going to do it.”

     “I’m not your mom.”

     “I wouldn’t want you to be my mom.”

     I gave her a little smile.”

     “Is that smile a yes?”

      “No.  It’s just a smile.”

      She pecked me on the check and bounced up and down on the seat.  “It is a yes!  I think it is definitely a yes.”

     I was looking for Cross Hill.  I knew it was somewhere nearby.  The sun had gone down and it was almost dark.

 

7. MONDAY

 

I haven’t written anything since Friday afternoon.  I picked up my notebook a few times and put it down again.  I guess you’re wondering why I keep putting it down.  Or maybe you’re not wondering at all.  I don’t have to write in it every day.  It’s my story and I’ll write it when I want to write it.

     It’s Sunday night.  It’s almost midnight.  I have it in my mind that I’m going to wait until Monday to write the next chapter.  I’m looking at my watch.  Soon it will be 11:48 pm.  Then it will be 11:49 pm.  Then it will be 11:50 pm.  And you know what it will be after that.  I’ll bet you’re wondering if I’m going to keep counting each minute.  Maybe you’re getting a little annoyed waiting for me to get on with my story.  I don’t have to get on with the story just because you want me to.  I can just keep counting he minutes until Monday.  Let’s see, after 11:51 pm I will be 11:52 pm.  And then it will be 11:53 pm, and then it will be 11:54 pm, and then 11:55 pm.  And then 11:56 pm and 11:57 pm.  And then 11:58 pm and then 11:59 pm and then, and then.  Then it will be Monday.  Then it will be a whole new day.

     Outside it is raining.  The rain is tapping against the glass of my window.  Have you ever sat on your bed early in the morning and listened to the rain?  No, probably not.  You’re probably snoring away by now.  That’s the trouble with the world.  Not enough people sit on their beds early in the morning and listen to the rain.

     I’m stalling.  For some reason I don’t want to write about what I did to Jenny on Cross Hill.  It’s not a big deal.  I just don’t feel like getting into it.  I don’t know why.  Do you know why I don’t feel like getting into it?  Well, I’ve written this much, so I might as well continue.

     No, I didn’t kill her.  I thought about it.  But I was having fun playing with her.  Sometimes I do that.  Sometimes I play with women before I kill them.  I enjoy playing with women by pretending to be a nice guy, but being nice to women makes me tense.  I can’t be nice for too long.  The longer I play the nice guy, the more I want to be mean.

     When I took the exit to Cross Hill, Jenny smiled.  She kept asking if we were going to have sex now.  Actually, her word was “fuck.”  She thought it made her grown up to use that word.  She thought it would impress me.  But instead, it annoyed the hell out of me.  I didn’t answer her.  In fact, I didn’t speak at all as we drove way up to the hill.  I stopped the car and opened my door.  She had a little smile on her face.  She was expecting some kind of romantic interlude.  I strutted around the car and opened her door.  I wasn’t smiling at all. 

     “Get out!” I ordered.  “Take off your clothes!”

     She looked at me as she stepped out.  “Hey, what’s the rush?  I said I was going to fuck you.”  She reached out to hug me. 

     “I said take off your clothes,” I said, backing away.

     “I feel a little weird.  Could we kind of hug or something first?” 

     “I don’t like hugs.  Take off your clothes!  I’m not going to tell you again!”

     “You don’t like hugs?  That’s odd.  Why?”

     “Never mind.  Did you hear what I said?”

     She thought I was kidding around.  She sidled up to me and gave me a cute, side-eyed look.  “How about a kiss, then?”

     “How about a slap?”   c                                                                             

     “Why are you talking to me like that?”  It was gradually dawning on her that I wasn’t playing around.  “Aren’t we friends.  I thought we were friends.”

     I slapped her hard enough to cause her head to jerk around.  I wanted her to know that she was absolutely not my friend.  I wanted her to know she was in danger.  I wanted her to know that I was a dangerous man.  I wanted to see the transition.  I wanted to see her eyes change.  That was what most excited me.  Each one had a slightly different way of reacting.  Some would try to get away.  Some would try to fight.  Some would try to understand me.  But their faces were always the same.  Betrayal would be etched into each wrinkle.  Jenny didn’t have any wrinkles, but I could see the betrayal and the sudden fear in her blue eyes.  She started to scream and I held my hand over her mouth.  With my other hand I pulled a small automatic pistol out of my pocket.  It was a Smith and Wesson 38.  It held six bullets.

     “Do you want to live?  If you want to live, then do what I say!  If you scream, I’ll kill you.  If you cry, I’ll kill you.  If you try to run, I’ll kill you.  Now, shut your mouth and take off your clothes!”

     She stared at the pistol.  “You’ve got a gun?  Is that a real gun?  Is this some kind of joke?”

     “Is this a joke?”

     I pointed the gun a few inches of the left of her ear and shot it.  There was a loud bang.  Some branches fell in the distance.  I cocked the trigger and held the gun against her temple.  She shut her eyes as if waiting for another shot.

     “I’m going to ask you one more time to take off your clothes.”

     Now I had gotten her attention.  And I had succeeded in terrifying her.  This is exactly what I wanted to do.  I have read several books on hypnosis.  People can be hypnotized without their knowing it.  You can terrorize people into a hypnotic trance without doing the usual, “You are getting sleepy” routine.   In a terror trance, people will convince themselves of anything.  They will do and be what you want them to do and believe.  If you stick a pin into them and tell them it doesn’t hurt, they will feel no pain.  They are the same as if they had been formally hypnotized.  I could see that Jenny was starting to flip into a trance.  She was trembling and pulling off her shorts and her eyes were gazing out as though she was a deer in the headlights.   Soon she was going to be completely under my control.

     “OK, I’ll do whatever you say,” she muttered.   “Please don’t kill me.  Please, please, please don’t kill me.  You can do whatever you want to me.  I won’t tell anybody.  Everything is fine.  OK.  OK.  You don’t need the gun.  You can fuck me or do whatever you want.”

     I slapped her again.  “Don’t use that kind of language!”

     She held her hands against her face for protection.  “OK.  OK!”

     I stood back a few feet and kept the gun pointed at her head.  I was starting to get excited.  I don’t get excited by women’s bodies.  Some guys spend hours jerking off to women’s bodies, but that’s not me.  I have never gotten excited by women’s bodies.  I have to be mean to them to get a hard on.  Once I have them under my complete control, I can get a little excited but only a little.  You amateur psychologists can make what you want of that.  I’ve already analyzed it myself and I know what it means and so what?

     Jenny was down to her panties.  She had red lacy panties and little girly nubs for tits.  I almost had to laugh.  “Is this good enough?” she asked. 

     “Take off the panties.”

     She took them off, shaking and panting in terror.  She almost tripped as she was taking them off.  She turned to me and hugged herself.  Her thin, adolescent body was trembling as she stood in the woods under the evening sun.  Her eyes had that betrayed look, but also that trance look.

     “Turn around!” I ordered.

     She didn’t turn around.  She started babbling nervously.  “All right, I did what you asked.  Please don’t kill me.  I took off my clothes.  I’ll do whatever you want me to do.  You don’t need the gun, really.  It’s not necessary.  I like you.   I’ll fuck you.  Ill fuck and suck your cock.  I’ll fuck your brains out.  Do you want me to go down on you?”  She dropped to her knees and reached out.  “I’ll do anything for you.”

     Her begging annoyed me.  It meant she still thought she could sweet-talk me and control me.  I slapped her again.  I wanted her to know that she was completely at my mercy.  I wanted her to know there was nothing she could do.   Nothing.

     “Shut up!” I said.

     “OK.”  That’s fine.  Just please don’t kill me.  I have plans for the future.   I won’t tell anybody.  I promise I won’t tell anybody.  Worse things have happened to me and I didn’t tell anyone.  Please don’t kill me.”

     “Shut up!  Get off the ground.  Turn around and learn over the hood of the car.”

     “All right.  No problem.  Fuck me, Bobby.”

     “Don’t talk like that.”

     “OK.  Whatever you say.”

     She leaned over the hood and looked back at me.  “Promise you won’t kill me?”

     “I won’t kill you.  Lean over the hood!”  I pointed the gun at her head.

     She was cringing and clinging to the hood.  Her eyes were closed and her long lashes were holding steady.

     She had wanted something romantic, but that’s the opposite of what I wanted.  I wanted it rough.  I wanted to hurt her.  I didn’t want it to have anything to do with love and tenderness.  I wanted to punish her, pure and simple.  I wanted to punish her for being so perky and lovable.  I wanted to punish her for thinking she could trust people.  I wanted to punish her for thinking she had a bright future.  She screamed out.  She was in pain and she was in terror and she was completely in my control and I loved it.

     “Shut up!  I said, don’t scream!”  I poked the gun against her temple.

     “I’m sorry.  I’ll stop.  I’ll stop.”

     After that she was quiet.  I actually wanted her to scream some more.  I liked it when she screamed, but she was quiet.  From babbling forever, she went completely, eerily quiet.  She was quiet but she was excited all right.  Her juices were flowing down her legs.  I have read somewhere that women get more excited when they’re raped than at any other time, and that there’s a high rate of pregnancy from rape.  When their nerdy husbands have sex with them, they hardly get excited at all, and that’s why they have so much trouble getting pregnant.  They marry a man they can control, and they pretend to respect him but they really don’t.   Because they don’t respect their husband, they don’t become sexually excited.   It’s a farce.

      It was clear that I now had Jenny’s respect and surrender and quietness turned me.  I took it to her with a vengeance.  She was quiet but she was trembling and her eyes were bulging all over the place.  She was like a patient on an operating table that had been doped up for a procedure.  I was performing the operation and she was by now in a deep trance.  Toward the end she starting screaming like a butchered pig.  I held my hand over her mouth and she finally stopped screaming.

     I saw two deer standing behind some trees.  They were female deer, without horns.  They were looking at us.  I wondered if they were astonished at how we humans were acting.  For some reason I always like to look at nature after I have violated someone.  Well, it’s all nature, isn’t it?  Afterwards I put the gun in my pocket and sat on the fender to get my breath.  The two deer ran away and I watched them disappear into the trees.   A squirl jumped above us from branch to branch.  Nature went on its merry way, regardless of what we humans did.  

     I was resting after the exciting romp, enjoying the nature on Cross Hill, taking pleasure in understanding how animals and humans fit together.  Then I looked at Jenny.  She wasn’t interested in nature.  She was still hunched over the hood, trembling, gazing ahead fearfully.

     “You didn’t kill me,” she said.

     “I said I wouldn’t.”

     “Can I put on my clothes now?”

     “Yes, get dressed.”

     I didn’t feel at all tense anymore.  I felt quite relaxed and even a little happy.  Maybe I’ll stop at a deli and get Coronas, I thought.  Then I heard Fritz calling me. 

     I’ll have to finish this later.  Fritz, my jolly keeper, is standing at the door of my cell.  I think he wants something.

      

8. MONDAY AFTERNOON

 

“Bobby?  Bobby?  Can you stop writing those short, sample sentences for a minute?”  Fritz’s eyes were twinkling like Santa Clause’s.  They were twinkling as if he were about to hand me a pardon from the governor.  “Bobby?  Bobby?” he kept calling.  I put down my ball-point pen after I finished my last sentence and looked up.

     “Yes, Fritz?” I asked.

     “Bobby?  Hey, Bobby?  There’s someone here to see you.”

     I had no idea who would be visiting me at this time in the late afternoon.  Normally visitors were only allowed during visiting hours.

     “Oh, yeah?  Who’s that?”

     Behind Fritz, I saw Reverend Kohler emerge out of the shadows.  He stood smiling blissfully near the door.  He had that look of serenity on his face, the expression that all preachers wear like a heavenly mask.  His eyes were bright and full of high-born love for all men and all women and all snails and venus fly-traps and Mongolian geese, too.  His nose was high in the air, ready to sniff at all things, fair and fowl.  His mouth was slightly pursed as if about to utter a prayer.  I was wondering if the muscles in his face got sore from all that facial postering.  I was wondering what happened to his face when he went home.  I was wondering if he had to shake out his face each night.

     “Hi, Bobby.  How’re you doing?” he asked.  His voice was full of forbearance.

     I stood up and walked toward him.  I didn’t return his smile.  I had no need to pretend anymore.  “Reverend Kohler?  I figured you’d be here soon.  How’s the church?  Does it need a new coat of paint?  Sorry I won’t be able to pitch in this year.  I’m a bit indisposed.”

     He nodded and smiled with deep understanding and pressed his hands together.  He didn’t get it.  He thought I was religious because I had helped paint the church a few summers ago.  t “Bobby, would you mind if I join you for a minute?” he asked.

     “Yes, I would mind, Reverend.”

     Reverend Kohler was a little taken aback, but just a little.  For just a moment his eyes flickered like a candle that had been hit by a puff of wind.  Then the aura of serenity returned to his face.  I was, he quickly recognized, a child of God.  “Bobby, it’s still not too late for forgiveness.  Everything’s forgivable in the Lord’s eyes.”

     “I don’t need forgiveness, Reverend.  I need a toilet that works.  The toilet here doesn’t work.”  I graciously pointed toward the commode in the corner of my cell.  “Do you know what it’s like to have to smell your own shit all day, Reverend?  But then, your shit probably smell heavenly.”

     “I know you don’t believe in God, Bobby.  But I think you should try.  Now, at this point in your life, you should try.”

     “What can God do for me now?”

     “He can give you life everlasting, Bobby, if you repent and accept Jesus as your savior.”

     I laughed out loud and stepped up to the bars behind which he stood and stared at the reverends mild, forgiving blue eyes.  “You think Jesus can save me, Reverend?”

     “I know He can, Bobby.”

     I stood there smiling with a great deal of amusement.  The holy man smiled back with a great deal of shining forgiveness.  Fritz, standing beside him, smiled with a great deal of jollity and relief because I, not he, was the one trapped behind bars with a smelly commode.  But I didn’t really care about Fritz.  I was eying the Reverend’s pock-marked face.  It seemed even more oily and pocked than usual.  Indeed, his face was a living contradiction.  There were those two serenely forgiving eyes.  And then there was that land of volcanoes that was his face, which was covered with acne.  If he was so serene, why was his face erupting all over the place?  His face was a tell-tale sign of his inner conflicts.  His face was the epitome of that Biblical saying about someone’s right hand not knowing what his left hand was doing.  Or maybe, in the case of the Reverend, his left hand didn’t know what his right hand was doing.  Nor did his left brain know what his right brain was thinking.

     Throughout history, Christians have played the hands game.   They raised their right hands heavenward as their left hands ordered the burning of millions of witches.  They raised their right hands while their left hands pointed to the beheading of thousands of heathens during the Spanish Inquisition.  They held their hands together in prayer as they send thousands of children to die in the Crusades.  Over the years priests have held their arms as they sodomized thousands of pimply preteen boys.

     Religious nuts are amazing.  They represent another species of con-artist.  They’re different then the feminists who try to provoke guilt by making all those signs stating that every seven days a woman is raped or beaten or maimed.  Feminists know they are con-artists.  If you talk to them privately, they will admit they are con-artists.  Christians really believe all their crud.  They really believe that Jesus died on the cross and then rose from the dead on the third or the fifth or the eighteenth day or whatever it was.  They really believe Jesus was the son of God and that if they follow him and are good to go.   They will go to heaven if they are good and if they are bad, they’ll go to hell.   You want my opinion?  Of course not, but I’m going to give it anyway.  Jesus wasn’t the son of God.  That’s just the story Mary made up after she had slept around and gotten preggers.  That was the story she and Joseph made up after Joseph, a nerdy guy, pretended to be Mary’s husband and they decided, to cover Mary’s shame, to make Jesus the messiah, which was a story that was going around then.  Jesus was nothing more than a man with a messiah-complex.   Jesus was one of history’s greatest con-artists.  He conned everybody into thinking that he was the son of God.  What a bunch of malarky!

     But don’t let me get started on that!

     “You want to know the truth?” I said to the Reverend.  I was standing a few inches away from his pockmarked face.  “I think your Jesus was one of the biggest nut cases who ever lived.  He couldn’t even save himself, and yet he kept saying he had come to save all mankind.  How’s he going to save me, Reverend, if he got himself killed on the cross?  Explain that to me!”

     “Bobby, I know you don’t mean what you’re saying.  I know that deep down you have good in you.”

     “You’re wrong, Reverend.  I don’t have any good in me at all.  I am 100% evil.”

     The Reverend smiled even more blissfully and I could see he was angry with me.  But he couldn’t allow himself to be angry.  Anger was unchristian.  So, he was angry in a blissful way.  “No, you’re not, Bobby.  You’re not evil.  You did some evil things, but you’re not evil.”

     “Have it your way, reverend.”  I stuck my face between the bars and grinned at the Reverend as evilly as I could.  I widened my smile so that it went from ear to ear.  I must have looked like some smiling fool in a comic strip.  Then I had a sudden impulse.  “Come here, Reverend.  I want to tell you something.”

     The Reverend at first hesitated, and there was a glint of distrust in his eyes.  Then he shook the distrust out of his heart and leaned in to hear what I had to say. 

     “I have a confession for you,” I said.

     “Yes, Bobby.  I’m here.”

     The Reverend leaned forward with his ear between the bars, thinking I was going to whisper a sweet confession into it.  But instead, I reached through the bars and grabbed the Reverend’s head.  I held him so he couldn’t get away.   Then I kissed him full on the lips.  His lips were firm and divinely tight but I managed to crack them open with my tongue and stab my way into his throat.  The serene, heavenly smile flickered and then was no more.  It was replaced by a look of horror.  At that point he tried to pull away but he couldn’t.  I had a vice grip around his head and his face was pressed against the bars.  My tongue danced around in his mouth like it was in Sodom and Gomorrah.  The Reverend’s face grew blood red and he was twisting and turning to get out of my grip.

     Then Fritz pulled out his night stick and raised it over my head.

     “OK, that’s enough.  Get back in your cell, Bobby.  I like you, but I will whack you because you are being mean to the Reverend.  Stand back, please!”

     I let the Reverend go and backed up a few feet, but I continued to grin at him.  He was shaking his body and head, trying to get rid of the evil I had planted inside of him.

     “You see, Reverend, I really am evil!”  I flashed a wonderous grin.  It was fun to see his blissful countenance go to pieces.  “I am really unforgivable!”

     He stepped back and shot me a solemn glance.  “I’ll pray for you, Bobby.”

     “Pray for yourself, Reverend.  Pray for yourself and all your perverted colleagues at the Vatican.”

     “No,” the Reverend said.  He was trying to think of something else to say, but he couldn’t.

     Fritz quickly guided the Reverend out of the door.  There were catcalls from the other cells.  Some of the catcalls were directed at the Reverend, but some were directed at me.  “Hey woman killer!  Shut your mouth Sissy-boy!” one of them said.  

     “All right, right, pipe down,” Fritz said.

     I don’t think the Reverend will visit me again.  Do you think he will visit me again?  Do you think he will want another kiss?  No, I don’t think so.  Let’s put a wager on it.  Are you a betting man?  I don’t have any money.  They don’t let you have any money in here, but I’ll wager the future royalties of this journal I’m writing.  It has some really good short, simple sentences.  What do you think?  You won’t accept the future royalties?  I’m just kidding.  There won’t be any royalties. 

  

 9. TUESDAY

 

I’m not sure what to write about today.  I guess I’ll continue the story of Jenny.  For some reason, that’s the only thing I want to write about.

     After we drove down from Cross Mountain and want back to I71, Jenny didn’t say a word.  She was like that.  Sometimes she wouldn’t stop talking and sometimes she would clamp up and not talk again for a long time.  She was sitting way on the other side of the passenger seat.  Her legs were pressed against the door.  Her head was turned away from me.  Her eyes were turned away from me.  Her mouth was turned away from me.  She was hugging herself.  She was shivering.  She had a very forlorn expression.  She was the opposite of the bright peppy girl she had been before.  She looked as if she was the most disappointed girl in the world.  I almost had to laugh.  I felt good that I had knocked some of that sweetness and smugness out of her.  But once or twice, for just a second or two, I almost felt sorry for her.

     In the past I had almost always killed women right away.  This was the one time I let it go on for a while.  I don’t know why I did that with her.  I kept thinking I would kill her soon or that I would kill her eventually.  There was something about her.  There was something about the way her eyes sparkled with hope that made me want to mess with her.  I enjoyed teasing her and having her under my control.  She was cute when she was mad.

     I kept driving on Highway 71, the highway that went to Memphis—which was about halfway to Miami—without actually making a decision about where I was headed.  We drove for a long while in total silence.  I thought maybe she would never speak again.  Then all at once she turned to me.  In a sad, frightened, angry and resigned voice, she asked, “Where are we going?”

     Her sad-sack attitude made me want to tease her.  “Miami.”

     “Yeah, right.”

     “You said you wanted to go to Miami.”

     “I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe anything you say.”

     “OK.”

     She gazed out of the window, then suddenly turned around again.  She stared at me for a while as if trying to figure me out.  Her legs were folded under her and she was hugging herself.

    ‘You didn’t have to do that,” she finally said.

     “Didn’t I?”

     “I was going to fuck you anyway.  I said I was going to fuck you, and I always keep my word.  You didn’t have to do that.”

     “I told you before I don’t like it when you use that kind of language.  You think it makes you grown up if you use that kind of language?”

     “You’re funny.  I mean, you’re not really funny.  You’re scary.  But it’s weird how one minute you’re pointing a gun at me and raping me, and the next minute you’re getting on your moral high-horse about my language.  Don’t you think that’s weird?”

     “Just watch your language, OK?”

     “Why?  Are you going to shoot me if I say ‘fuck’?”

     “I might.”

     “Where are you taking me?”

     “To Miami?”

     “Seriously.  What are you going to do with me?”

     “I’m taking you to Miami.”

     “Really?”

     “Really.”

     “I don’t believe you.”

     “Then don’t.”

     She looked at me and I turned and gave her a friendly smile.  I was enjoying playing with her.  Actually, I was toying with the idea of driving her to Miami.  But I didn’t want to tell her that.  I enjoyed seeing her pout and posture and struggle to get a handle on me. 

     “Who are you?” she asked after a while.

     “Who do you think I am?”

     “You tell me!” she said with a nasty face.

     “No, you tell me,” I said, mimicking her.

     “Ha.  Ha.  Very funny.”

     “Ha.  Ha.  Very funny.”

     “Are you a killer?”

     “Maybe.”

     “Are you kidnapping me?”

     “You came with me of your own free will.”

     “Are you really taking me to Miami.”

     “Sure.”

     “And after we get to Miami?  Then what?  Are you going to let me go?  Are you going to take me to my uncle’s?”

     “That depends on you.”

     “What do you mean?”

     I gave her a pointed look.  “I think you know what I mean.”

     For the first time she smiled.  It was a sarcastic smile.  “So, if I fuck you and do whatever you say and promise not to snitch on you afterwards, you’ll take me to my uncle’s?”

     “The first thing you’re going to have to do, if you want me to go to your uncle’s, is to stop using language like that.”

     “OK.  OK.  No problem.  So, if I don’t use bad language and I make love to you and do whatever you say and promise not to snitch, you’ll take me to my uncle’s?”

     “Maybe.”  We were nearly empty on fuel and I saw a gas station down the highway.  “All right, now listen up.  We’re going to have to stop for gas and I’ve got to make a phone call.  If you want me to take you to your uncle’s in Miami, then you have to prove to me I can trust you.  When we get to the gas station, I want you to just sit in the car and be quiet.”

     “What if I have to pee?”

     “If you have to pee, I’ll just stop on the side of the road and you can pee.”

     “Thanks,” she said sarcastically.  “And what if I have to take a, you know.  What if I have to do number two?”

     “The side of the road.”

     “Eeeow.  That’s gross.”

     “Now listen to me!”  I grabbed my gun and pointed it at her to emphasize the gravity of the situation.  I had to condition her.  I had to put her back into a trance.  It’s called informal induction.  I had to make it clear to her that there was no way out.  I had to repeat things over and over again.  I had to repeat them until she was bored with hearing them and the repetition slipped past her guard deep into her brain.  “When we get to the gas station I don’t want to hear a peep out of you,” I said to her about 20 times.  “If you talk to the gas station attendant or scram or try to run, I’ll kill you,” I repeated this about 20 more times.  Her eyes gawked at me and she was frozen in her seat.  “I’ll kill you and I’ll kill the attendant,” I repeated and repeated.  “Do you understand?  Don’t talk to anybody.  Don’t talk to anybody.  Don’t talk to anybody?  I’ll kill you or anybody you talk to.  Don’t talk to the attendant.  Don’t talk to the attendant.  Do you hear?  Do you hear?  Do you hear?  I’ll kill you.  I’ll kill you.  I’ll kill you.  I’ll kill you or anybody you talk to.  Do you hear?  Answer me.  Say ‘yes’ if you understand.”

     “Yes.”

     “Don’t talk to anybody.   Don’t scream.  Don’t run.  Just sit quietly in the car.  Like I said, I need you to prove to me I can trust you.  If you prove to me I can trust you, then when we get to Miami, I’ll let you go.  Do you understand?”

     “Yes.”  Her eyes were riveted on my eyes.  “I understand.  You can trust me, Bobby.  I’ll prove it to you.  When I give my word, I keep it.  I’m a very trustworthy person.”

     “OK.  But remember what I said.  I will kill you if you try anything.”

     “Yes.  I hear you.  You can put the gun away.  I’ll be quiet.  You can trust me.”

     She gaped at me and I put away the gun.  I took the next exit and turned into the Exxon station.  By now it was dark outside, but the station was well-lighted.  I pulled up to a pump and a young male attendant meandered over.  I got out of the car.

     “Fill it up with regular,” I said.

     “You bet,” the young man said. 

     I leaned into the car window and gave Jenny a stern look.  She was sitting back in the passenger seat, and her blue eyes looked dumb and innocent and her mouth was tight and guarded.   “I have to make a phone call.  Remember what I said.”

     “I remember.”

     I gave her one more stern look for good measure and then headed for a pay phone.  I picked up the receiver and dialed my home number, keeping my eye on Jenny.  I had my back turned to her, but I was glancing back at her now and then.  I wanted her to know I was watching her.  I wanted to see what she would do.  The attendant, a muscular young man wearing a tank top, was washing the windshield.  She was sitting quietly inside.

     I went to the payphone.

     “Hello,” came Lily’s voice in the receiver.

     “Hi, Baby,” I answered.

     Her voice was relieved and angry at the same time.  Probably she had been fretting about me all night.  Probably she had called every bar in Kansas City looking for me.  “Baby, where have you been?” she said in an anxious tone.

     “I’m in St. Louis,” I said.

     “What on earth for?”

     “It’s a long story.  Business deal.”

     There was a suspicious pause.  “What kind of business deal?”

     “I’ll tell you when I get home.  I can’t talk now.  Do me a favor.  Call Frank’s and tell them I’ll be gone for a few days.  OK?  Tell them I had some urgent business to attend to.”

     “Bobby, what’s going on?  Are you going to Los Vegas again?”

     I was watching Jenny.  The attendant was leaning into the window from the driver’s side, talking to her.  He was tall and his muscles bulged from his tank top.  The bastard loved showing off his muscles.  He thought he could seduce Jenny with his cocky smirk and muscles.   I hate guys like that.  She apparently liked it.  She was all smiles.  She was smiling and laughing.

     “I have to go,” I told Lily.

     “Bobby?...”

     I hung up the phone and rushed back to the car.  I tapped the attendant on the shoulder.  He was still leaning into the window.  The gas had stopped pumping into the car.  When I tapped his shoulder, he stood up quickly and his head bumped into the top of the window.  He looked like the cat that had eaten the canary. 

     “Oh, hi!” he said.

     I stared him down.  “How much do I owe you?”

     “That’ll be fifteen even.”

     I paid him in cash and quickly stepped into the car.  I squealed around to the highway ramp.  As soon as we were on the highway again, I began to grill her.  Apparently, she had not been hypnotized after all.  Some people can’t be hypnotized.  Three out of 10 people can’t be hypnotized. 

     “What was that about?” I asked her.

     “What do you mean?”

     “What were you two talking about?”

     “Nothing.  He told me how much the gas was going to cost and I said you’d pay him when you got back.”

     “That’s it?”

     “That’s it.”

     “So, what were you smiling and laughing about?”

     “Nothing.”

     “It didn’t look like nothing to me.”

     She was sitting there with folded arms.  “If you must know, he said I had cute eyes, and I said thanks, and then he started talking about some old girlfriend who I reminded him of.”

     “I told you not to talk to anybody.”

     “Well, what was I supposed to do when he had his head in the window talking to me?  Not answer?”

     “That’s right.”

     “Look, I could have told him to call the police or something, but I didn’t.  I gave you my word and when I give my word I keep it.”

     I stared at her with a long, probing look and she stared back with quiet defiance.  She could be very stubborn.  I was getting to know her stubbornness.  She seemed mild-mannered, but underneath was the stubbornness.  I thought about slapping her but decided not to waste my time.  Anyway, I had to keep the wheel of the car steady.

     “So, who were you talking to?” she asked.  “You’re wife?”

     “What makes you think I’m married.”

     “Women’s intuition.”  She looked at me and waited for me to answer.  “Well?  Was it your wife?”

     “No.”

     “Liar.”

     She turned away then and was quiet again.  She sat turned away from me again like before, pouting.  She pouted for a long time.  She had taken off her sneakers and was sitting with her bare feet on the seat and her knees high in the air.  She wanted me to see her and feel sorry for her.  But I didn’t look at her.  I was trying to figure out how to condition her without hypnosis.  Then, all at once, she said, “Anyway, unless you want me to pee all over the seat, you’d better stop somewhere soon.”

     I pulled over on the shoulder of the road and squealed to a stop.  I could see there was a little trail into the woods.  She got out and walked down the trail and squatted behind a bush.  I got out too and took a quick pee myself, keeping my eyes on her.  “You just going to watch?” she called out.  I didn’t answer.  It was a dark night and there was hardly any moon.  I could hardly see her outline.  But I could hear her tinkling onto the dead leaves on the trail.  When she was finished, she tiptoed out of the bushes and began zipping her shorts.  She was barefooted.  Her sneakers were back in the car.  As she went past me, I grabbed her arm.

     “Take off your shorts and lie down,” I ordered.  I suddenly had an urge to punish her for talking to the attendant.

     “Now?”

     “Now.”

    “Fine.  I told you, you don’t need to be this way.”

     “Just lie down on your belly.  Pooch out your ass.”

     She did as she was told in a disappointed, resigned way.  I lay on top of her and yanked her shorts to her knees.  I was even more brutal than the first time.  I wanted to make her bleed.  She just lay there and let me do it.  She didn’t scream at all.  When I was finished, I thought about killing her.  Her neck was right there.  I could have done it very quickly.  I always preferred strangling my victims.  She lay there after I was finished and waited and it would have been so easy.  Maybe too easy.  I decided not to do it.  I knew I would kill her eventually, but for now, it was an adventure.  What else did I have to do with my life?

     “Are you all finished?” she asked, looking up at me, lying on her stomach on the trail.  “Can I get up now?”

     “Suit yourself.”

     I know what you’re thinking.  “How could you kill such a cute, innocent girl?”  People always make a big deal out of death, especially if it’s a supposedly innocent young girl.  I say supposedly because I don’t think anybody is really innocent.  To me, death is simply a fact of nature.  You look at nature and you see the cycle of life and death.  All animals kill other animals.  Lions kill antelopes.  Cats kill mice.  Bears kill bees.  People get all sentimental about death.  They make all these moral judgments about death.  But if you look carefully, you’ll notice people are very selective about whose death they care about.  If a pretty young white women gets murdered, they make shrines at the place where she died and people keep talking about her and writing about her for years.  But if a black woman with a hair-lip and a hunched back dies, do you think anybody cares or builds a shrine?  And he same people who make a big deal about a cute, young girl’s death are quick to join the next war and merrily slaughter thousands of people without a thought.

     Life is precious, they say.  No, it isn’t precious.  It just is.  No matter how miserable people are, they fool themselves into thinking life has meaning.  If you look at things from the perspective of the universe, death is simple a part of the cycle of existence.  Planets life and die.  Suns live and die.  We live and die.  People give death meaning because they take it personally. 

     I read a lot of Freud when I was a teenager.  Like everybody else, I wanted to find a way out, a way not to have to die.  Then I read Freud and became fascinated with his theory about the death instinct, and I found a way out.  He thought there is an instinct to die.  He thought that all animate things like people and trees and lizards and bombardier beetles were once inanimate matter.  We are all just a bunch of lifeless atoms at one time, and then for a moment we spring to life and the next thing you know, we are making all kinds of preachy sentimental pronouncements about how precious life is.  Buit life, according to old Freud, is all a big accident.  We spring to life for a moment and yell “hurrah!” and then we return to inanimate matter.  Everybody lives and dies and there’s no way to get around it.  The only thing to do is to accept it. 

     “You’re wrong!” you are screaming at me with every ounce of displaced energy in your body.  “You’re a madman!  Life has meaning.  You’re full of shit.   Do you know that?  You are so full of shit!  Shut up!  Just shut up!”

     “Sorry to expose your lie!”

     “I said, shut up!”

     Yeah, yeah, yeah.  You need to believe in good and evil.  You need to believe in villains.  You need to cling to heaven and hell.  You’ve got to hold on to your precious view that life is important and meaningful.  OK, go on, believe in it.  I don’t care and neither does Freud.  He’s lucky.  He’s returned to inanimate matter.  He doesn’t ever have to deal with the sentimental crap of this world again.

 

10. WEDNESDAY

 

I have a migraine headache.  I’ve been taking three to five aspirin tablets at a time but it doesn’t do any good.  I’ll probably die of a stroke before they get me into the death chamber.  Wouldn’t that be an ironic twist?  A lot of people would be disappointed if I died before they had a chance to kill me!

     Let me get back to the story.  Maybe it will distract me from the headache.

I have an image of in my mind of Jenny’s sad face.  We were driving down the highway and it was pretty dark.  We had been driving for hours and it must have been almost 10 pm.  I kept glancing at her and I could see the features of her face in profile: the long lashes, like nightshades, over her eyes; the sulky mouth with the lower lip slightly protruded; her hair, now in a ponytail, hanging down the middle of her back; her bare feet pressed onto the seat and her bony knees held tight against her chest.  It was funny.  She didn’t need to hold herself so tightly now.  She didn’t need to be so quiet and distant.  After a while I was relaxed and even wanted her to say something.  It was boring just looking at the white stripe in the middle of the road.  I had wanted to knock her down, but not that far down.  If she was too far down, it was no fun.

     Finally, she began to say what was on her mind.  “So, you’re kidnapping me, is that it?”

     I didn’t answer.  I wanted to give her back some of her coldness.

     “Are you kidnapping me?  That’s what you’re doing, right?”

     I didn’t answer.

     “Can you just tell me where you’re taking me?  Can you tell me if you’re going to kill me?  If I’m going to die, I’d like to know.  Will you just tell me if and when you decide to kill me?”

     I gazed blankly down the road and adjusted the wheel.

     “You know, you don’t have to do this.  I told you that if you take me to Miami, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.  Why does it have to be this way?”

     I watched the white strip shimmer in the middle of the road.

     “Why don’t you answer me?  Are we really going to Miami?  Bobby?  Hello?  Bobby?  Are you still there?  I just want to know where you’re taking me and what you’re going to do.  Is that too much to ask?”

     I turned to her all at once.  “I told you.  I’m taking you to Miami.” 

     “No, you’re not.  Tell me the truth.  At least you can do that much.  I just want to know the truth.”

     I kept my eyes on the road.  “Miami,” I said in a soft voice.

     If I had told her the truth, she would have gone berserk.  If I had told her she was going to die, she would have started screaming and crying and carrying on.  She didn’t want to know the truth.  She wanted me to tell her a lie.  She wanted me to tell her she was going to live.  She was sulking about her little adolescent life and wondering how to save it and her stupid dreams.

     After a while we reached Memphis.  We passed the sign on the edge of the city and Jenny looked at the sign with her sulky eyes.  Her eyes slowly widened.  The sign said, “Welcome to Memphis, home of the blues.”  There were pictures of trombones and saxophones and trumpets on the sign.  Suddenly Jenny sat say up as if she had just drunk 10 cups of coffee.  “We’re in Memphis!” she said.  “Then you are taking me to Miami.  You are, aren’t you?”  I sort of smiled.  I didn’t want to answer one way or another.  I wanted to keep her in suspense.  “When do you think we’ll be in Miami?  Tomorrow morning.  We could drive all night.  I like driving at night, it relaxes me.  Do you like to drive at night?”

     “You want to drive all night?” I asked.

     “Sure.  Let’s drive all night.  I’m not even sleepy.  I’ve had some driving lessons from my uncle in Miami.  I have my learner’s permit and everything.  I could help you drive.” 

     I shouldn’t have asked her to drive all night.  That was encouraging her.  Now she started to babble.

     “You know, I’ll bet deep down you’re not the monster you pretend to be.”  She was gazing at me with her head cocked, like she was on to me.  I then had to listen to her amateur psychobabble.  “You pretend to be mean, but you’re not really mean.  That’s what I think.  That’s how my mom is.  She pretends to be this mom from hell.  That’s what I call her when I talk about her to friends.  My mom from hell.  My mom from hell did this.  My mom from hell did that.  My friends get a kick out of my stories.  I can be quite funny when I want to be.  I mean, I love her and all, but she can be a pain.  She’s always trashing me and slapping me for things, refusing to let me go out of the house at night, yelling at me if I drop a noodle on the floor, warning me that I’m going to hell, telling me I look like a whore.”  She imitated her mother, talking in a whiny, raspy voice.  ‘Look at you, Jenny.  God have mercy on your teenage soul--my daughter who acts just like a street whore.’”   Jenny squinted and drooled.  “That’s how my mom talks.  That’s how she looks.  Don’t you think that’s funny, Bobby?  Most people laugh when I do my mother. 

     I gave her a serious look.  “I’m not laughing.”

     “Stop it!  Well, other people think it’s funny.  I think you’re probably a lot like my mom.  My mom barks, but deep down she’s a pussycat.  After my dad left her, a few months after they got married, she never went out again.  Instead, she became a religious nut and made me her, as they say, significant other.  I’m serious.  She’s absolutely obsessed with me.  I’m her whole life.  I can’t even fart without her having a hissy fit.”

     “Don’t use that kind of language.”

     “Ha!  I got you to talk!  I got you to talk!”

     She smiled with glee and I drove on.  I guess I must have had a slight, grudging grin on the corners of my mouth.  She tried so hard to be cute.  You had to smile sometimes just out of politeness, or to get her to stop trying to cute you to death.  “Yes, you’re like my mom all right,” she kept saying.  “You have a loud bark like her, but deep down you need affection like everybody else.  I’ll bet your mom’s just as strange as my mom.  Is she, Bobby?  Is your mom strange?  Tell me about your mom.  Come on, you can tell me.”

     The last thing I wanted to do was talk about my mother.  “There’s nothing to tell.”

     She was the type that, once she got onto something, she wouldn’t let it go.  “I’ll tell you about my mom if you’ll tell me about yours, deal?”  She seemed to be gazing straight into my eyeballs.  “Bobby?  Is it a deal?”  I didn’t answer.  “Pease?  Fair is fair.  I told you about my mom, now you have to tell me about yours.  I have a feeling about your mom.  Didn’t you say your mom was white?  I want to hear about her.  Will you tell me about your mom?”  I kept driving down the road.  She was climbing up the wrong tree.  My mom wasn’t in that tree and she wouldn’t ever be there.  Anyway, I didn’t want to encourage her babbling.  But she went on anyway.  She started talking more about her mom, thinking we had a deal.  “My mom’s not all bad.  She mean’s well.  She’s always getting me to practice my singing.  She wants me to be a famous singer.  And you know what?  I want the same thing—but not for her.  For me.  Do you know what I mean, Bobby?  It’s for ME.  I’m practicing my head off and she thinks it’s for her.  She lives her life through me.  She has no life!  And sometimes she gets mean and strict and controlling and then I have to run away.  Do you know what I mean?  Did you like my singing before, Bobby?  Do you think I’m going to be famous?  Want me to sing another song for you?”

     It was about 10 pm.  Who feels like being sung to by a precocious teen cutie with pushy blue eyes at 10 pm?  But once the idea was in her head, it was already out of her mouth.

     She began to sing that old Beatle’s song, “Yesterday” in a full, American-Idol croon.  We were driving the loop around Memphis and the lights of the city were glaring across the car.  She was changing the lyrics as she went along.

 

                        Yesterday…

                        All my troubles seemed so far away.

                        I will think of them another day—

                        Oh, I believe in yesterday.

 

     She belted out the song.  I have to admit she sang pretty well.  I thought she would probably win the contest.  She sang like an angel.  But I kept driving and never looked at her.  She was gawking at me the whole time.  I was a one-man audience.  She was holding out her hands and emoting.  It was funny.  There was only me and maybe Memphis.  I wasn’t even looking at her but that didn’t stop her.  She kept right on singing and smiling and holding out her arms.  By the time she had finished, I was pretty agitated.   I get agitated when people sing to me.  I’d rather they yell at me.  If somebody yells at me, I can yell back.  But if they sing at you, what are you supposed to do?  She never noticed that I was agitated.  Most people don’t notice when you’re agitated.  She just kept singing away.  When she finished, she gazed at me with her big blues.

     “All right, all right.  You can sing.”

     She finally saw that I was agitated.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to bother you.  I do that to people sometimes.  My friends just tell me to shut up.  They say I’m a blabbermouth.  You can tell me to shut up if you want, Bobby.”  All at once she got on my case about my mother again.  “All right, now it’s your turn.  You have to tell me about your mom now.  Come on.  What was your mom like?  Is she obsessed with you the way my mom is with me?  Is she?  I’ll bet she is!  I have a hunch about your mom.  Come on, tell me.”

     “Knock it off about my mom.”

     “Grouch.”

     “Now.

     “Fine.”

     I was getting tired.  Her babbling and singing was making me tired.  Also, I had a stage-two headache and my neck and back was all stiff, too.  We had driven around Memphis and I figured there would be a motel somewhere near the outskirts.  I took the next exit. Sure enough, as soon as we got off the ramp there was a cheap motel.

 

11. THURSDAY MORNING

 

It was called the Memphis Star Motel.  Originally it must have been nice.  It was done up in a Mexican style, with white stucco walls and orange tiles on the roof.  But the walls were cracked now and some of the tiles were missing.  And the neon sign had two letters missing.  MEMP IS ST R MOTEL, it said.  I stopped the car in front of the office and turned to Jenny.  I told her I was going into the office to get a room.  I repeated it over and over and also repeated that I was going to kill her if she talked to anybody or ran away.  I wasn’t sure if she was hypnotizable or not, but I went through the ritual anyway.  “I’ll be right back and I’ll be able to see you from the window.  I’ll see if you talk to somebody.  I’ll see if you get out of the car.  Don’t talk to anybody.  Don’t leave he car.”  I repeated everything about ten times.  She made a face, but I knew she was hearing me.  That was all that mattered.  Finally, I got out of the car and walked to the motel office.  I had tucked my gun under the waist of my denim pants.  The fingers of my right hand were wrapped around the handle.  My blue, cotton shirt with a button-down collar was hanging over my hand.  I wanted Jenny to see my hand on the gun, and I gave her a hard stare as I turned into the office.

     Nobody was in the office so I rang the bell.  It was a dingy little office with two old chairs and an old lamp with a yellowing shade.  There were some brochures about Memphis in slots on the wall.  The door behind the desk had a bamboo curtain, and I could hear a television set behind it, turned to a situation comedy that had canned laughter.  Eventually a Korean woman came out.  She was middle-aged and had her hair in curlers and was wearing black-framed glasses.  She gave me a long look as if sizing me up.  She was all business. 

     “Oh, hello.  I didn’t hear you.  You don’t need to ring too much.  You want room?”  She looked up at me without smiling. 

     “Do you have a room with two double beds?”

     “Yes, yes.  We have plenty vacancy.  How long you stay?”

     “Just one night.  How much is it?”

     “Very good price for you.  Only fifty dollars.  OK?  Just sign here please.”

     I signed the register and she turned the book around.  She looked at my signature for a long time.  I had made up an insulting name and she was trying to figure it out.  Was the name for real or not?  Was I on the level or not.  She had one of those stubborn minds that won’t give up until they know what’s what.

     “Chinksnot?  That your name?”

     “Yes.”

     “Chinksnot?”

     “Yes.”

     “OK, Mr. Chinksnot.  Is that right?  I never hear it before.  All right then.”  She gave me a probing look.  “OK, then.  Fifteen dollars.” 

     I laid three fives on the counter.

     She studied the bills for a moment, checking out both sides.  Then she grabbed the keys from a nail on the wall and dropped them on the counter.  I took them and started to leave.

     “Excuse me, Mr. Chinksnot.  You like massage?”  She smiled for the first time.

     I stopped and turned all the way around.  I wasn’t sure what she meant.  Was she going to give me a massage on the spot.

     “No.  Not really,” I answered.

     “We have petty girl, she give you good massage.”   She smiled and nodded.

     “No, thanks.”

     “You married?”

     “Something like that.”

     “But you don’t wear ring.”

     “No, I don’t.”

     “You don’t wear wing, you not married.”

     “Some married people don’t wear rings.”

     “You should wear ring.  Handsome guy like you should wear ring to show people you married.”

     “You’re probably right.”

     She looked down at my name again.  She knew there was something wrong with it but didn’t know what.  “Chinksnot.  That is a funny name?”  She stared at the name and her mind was really working.  She was like a frustrated detective.  “That’s a funny name, right?”

     “Some people find it funny,” I said.

     “Is it something bad?”

     “No, it is very good.”

     “OK, Mr Chinksnot.”  She finally gave up on the name.  “But I don’t think you are married.  I send you nice girl later.  When you see girl, you want massage you pay girl $50 dollar.  I give you good deal.”

     “I don’t want a massage.  I’m just going to turn in.”

     “All right.  Very good.”

     I walked calmly out of the door.  I knew she was looking at the back of my head, but she couldn’t see my face.  I was smiling.

     As soon as I got outside, I checked the car.  Jenny was sitting there in the passenger seat smiling like a Cheshire Cat.  She waved at me in her spunky way and leaned her head out of the window.  “I told you!   You can trust me!”

     I didn’t wave back.

    

12. THURSDAY EVENING

 

The first thing Jenny did when we got into the motel room was go to the bathroom.  I figured it was to take a leak or attend to some female problem, so I let her go.  She could have opened the bathroom window and jumped out, but I knew she wouldn’t.  She was pretty well trained by then.  I was pretty sure she wouldn’t run away.  She was listening to my repetitions.

     I had carried in a paper bag of leftover egg salad and macaroni salad that I had intended to take home from the diner.  I poured some macaroni salad into one of those plastic glasses you find in motels and I sat on the bed eating it with a plastic fork.  I turned on the TV and a female anchor was talking.

     News shows always amuse me.  The news reporters are always these attractive women and men.  Everything is supposed to be very diverse and equal.  There is always a white woman reporter, a black woman reporter, a black man reporter, an Asian woman reporter and a sexy woman weather reporter.  The reporters are always joking around and pretending they are all equal and happy and that none of them notice who’s black or white or anything.  Most amusing of all are the white women.  No matter how many diverse people there are, the white women are always bouncing around like queen bees. They think they are number 1, although they never say that to anybody.  That’s how my mother was.  She was always bouncing around like the Queen of Sheba.

      But let me ask you something.  How come there are never any white male reporters on these shows, if it’s diversity they want?  How come they never have any Native Americans or African pigmies or Alaskan Eskimos or hunchbacks from Notre Dame?  And the people of color are always light-skinned reporters, not ebony-black reporters.  And all of them are great looking, thin and suave and cool as all hell.  They don’t have any ugly reporters with buckteeth or big red noses or huge old asses or missing teeth.  They never have old and wrinkled reporters who walk with a cane (much less a wheelchair) or any short and fat reporters whose bellies hang out of their pants or people with red pimples or black warts on their foreheads or naked African women reporters with dangling tits or Hillbilly reporters chewing tobacco and spitting wads on the floor.  Now that’s real diversity.

     It’s just another aspect of the hypocrisy of America.  American’s want to believe that they are the leaders of the free world and that they invented freedom and equality.  They want to believe that they are all very fair-minded and liberal, but they don’t want to carry it to its ultimate conclusion.  If you carried the diversity to its conclusion, an Eskimo would have to be President every 24 years.  The Senate would have to be proportionately represented not just by men and women but also by representatives of the 473 ethnic types in America.  Thus, the Senate would have to have 43% white males, 42% white females, 33% male Latinos and 33% female Latinos: 13% black males, 13% black females, 9% female and male Asians, 3% Native Americans, 2% white pigmies, 2% Texan albinos, et cetera, and the statistics would have to be checked after each election to make sure the proportions were still equal.

     Once I went to a community meeting of liberals and, as it turned out, I was the only black.  They expected me to believe in diversity and equality and all that crap, but I decided to surprise them.  In the middle of the meeting, I stood up and said, “Actually, I don’t believe in equality.”

     “You don’t believe in…equality?”  people gasped.   A pimply young man in the corner asked what I do believe in.  “I believe in inequality,” I said. 

     “Oh, my God,” one person called out.

     “What do you mean?” an old lady shrieked.

     “Please explain!” a fat man puffed out.

     “I believe that some people are tall and some people are short,” I said.  There were boos.  “I believe that some people are smart and some people are dumb.”  A skinny man in the back twitched.  “I believe that some people are light-skinned and some people are dark skinned.  Some people eat red apples and some people eat yellow apples, and that’s all right.  Some people have three-story homes and some people have one-story homes, and that’s all right.  Some people have beautiful wives and beautiful children and some people have ugly wives and ugly children and that’s all right.  Some people have big red cars and some people have little brown cars and it’s all right.  Some people are young and some people are old and that’s all right.  Some people have blue eyes and some have brown eyes and that’s all right.  I don’t think we should make everybody have blue eyes so that we can all be equal.  Some people have three moles and some have 10 moles and that’s all right.  Everything is not always equal and that’s all right.  Everything is usually unequal and that’s all right.  It’s all right if things are unequal if you think it’s all right and accept that it’s all right.  That’s the way the world is now and the way it’s always been.  Hurrah for inequality!” I took a bow and people were gawking at me.  By now it had dawned on them that I was making fun of them.  They began to boo and I was shown out the door.

     I sat back on one of the double beds watching the news when suddenly a reporter was talking about Cross hill.  “They found the remains of the body a few feet from the cross,” a reporter said.  “Experts said the boy had been decomposing for over a month.”  It was over a month that I killed the white whore there.  I was suddenly bored and cranky.

     Seeing the news put me in a cranky mood and staying in a cheap hotel room also put me in a cranky mood.  I try to avoid hotel room at all costs.  They remind me of when I was a kid and of my mother and what happened in hotel rooms.  It brought to mind the men who would knock on the door at all hours of the night or early in the morning.  I remembered white men and black men and Hispanic men.  I remembered young men and old men.  I remembered short men with big bellies and tall men with no bellies.  I remembered their faces in the dark, grinning with delight.  I remember the shadow of my mother in the middle of the bed, whispering, “Yes, baby.  Do it baby, do it!”  And then, “Oh, baby, you’re the best.”  I didn’t want to these men.  I didn’t want to remember my mother.  I didn’t want to remember the smell of the cheap bedrooms and the old bathrooms.  I lay back and closed my eyes.

     “Bobby?  Bobby?  Bobby?” Jenny was calling.  I could hear water splashing in the bathtub.  She had left the bathroom door open so I could hear everything.

     “Yeah?” I said after a while.

     “I’m hungry.  Could you please order us something to eat.”

     “Don’t worry about it.”

     “But I’m hungry.  Bobby?  Bobby?  Are you listening to me?”

     “Yeah.”

     After a while she came out of the bathroom.  She was wearing only the T-shirt that said, “Pretty Girl” and white panties hat had a pattern of little red hearts all over them.  The panties were so cute they made me want to puke.  She strutted out still dripping wet and stood at the foot of the bed posing for me.

     “How do I look, Bobby?”

     I was closing my eyes and relaxing.  I didn’t want to look up and ruin my state of relaxation.  “Fine,” I said.

     “You’re not looking at me.”

     She stood with her hands on her hips.  One hip was sticking out more.   I glanced up for only a second and closed my eyes again.

     “Bobby, look at my face.”

     I looked at her face for a moment then closed my eyes again.   “I said you look fine.”

     “Did you notice?”

    “Notice what?”

     “I took off my makeup.  You said you didn’t like makeup.  What do you think?”

     “Better.”

     “You didn’t even see it.”

     “I saw it.”

     She wasn’t discouraged.  “You see, Bobby.  I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

     “That’s good.”

     “What were you watching?  I heard people talking.”

     “The news.”

     I was tired of her cuteness so I turned on the TV again.  Just as I did, a police lieutenant was speaking into a microphone.  He said, “We don’t yet know what the cause of death was.  The women appeared to be strangled.”  They showed a shot of the woods where I had taken the Jasmine.  It was also where I had taken Jenny.  I flicked the remote to another show, “Wheel of Fortune.”

     Jenny gave me a probing look.  “Who got killed?”

     “Just some whore.”

     “You didn’t do it, did you?”  For a split-second a wrinkle of worry crossed her face.

     I answered nonchalantly.  “No.”

     She wanted to believe me, so she did.  Naturally, she didn’t want to think that I was a serial killer.  If I were a serial killer, then I would likely have kiled her.  That’s the last thing she wanted to know.  She plopped down on the bed beside me and smiled into my eyes.  “Hi.”

     I glanced at her and looked away at the TV show.  I much preferred the TV show.  A fat woman spun the wheel.  “M” she said.  I watched her intently, trying to guess the phrase.  I lay on the bed in my clothes.  I was aware that my shirt had rolled up and the handle of my gun was protruding from my pants.  I liked looking down and seeing the handle of the gun.  I liked knowing that Jenny could see the handle too.  It helped set up an atmosphere of intimidation.  It helped maintain control.  I didn’t look directly at the gun, though.  I was watching the television screen.  The fat woman solved the puzzle.  “Penny wise and pound ghoulish.”

     Jenny snuggled next to me.  She was determined.  She began to hug me and kiss me on the cheek.

     I pushed her away.  “Don’t.”

     “I was just giving you a hug and a kiss.”

     “I don’t like hugs and kisses.”

     “Why?”

     “Because I don’t.”

     “Why don’t you?”

     “Because they piss me off.  OK?”

     “OK.”

     I watched television.  She watched me.  I could feel her blue eyes on me.  She was trying to be very patient and positive.  The fat woman guessed the next phrase.  “A stitch in time saves nine lives.”  She jumped up and down and her breasts almost jostled out of her bra.  I looked at the fat woman.  Jenny looked at me.

     “Bobby?  Why don’t you take off your gun?”

     “I’ll take it off when I feel like it.”

     “Why don’t you take off your gun and fuck me.  I mean make love to me.”  She slid her fingers up my leg and raised her brows.

     That was it.  I had had it.  I could feel the tension grabbing at my shoulders, my neck, my temples.  My head ached.  I sat up and slapped her.   “What did I tell you about language?  And don’t touch me, do you understand?  I don’t like to be touched.  I don’t like hugs.  I don’t like kisses.  And I don’t like to be in motel rooms.  You got it?”

     She was shocked.  She was holding her face.  “You know, you really are a jerk sometimes!  You really are!”

     I picked up the plastic cup with the macaroni salad and began eating it as I watched the show.

     “What’s that?  Can I have some?”

     I handed her one of the plastic containers of macaroni salad and egg salad. She sat on the other bed with her legs folded, scooping egg salad and macaroni salad out of the containers with her fingers.  I could see how hungry she was.  She was gobbling the food up.  Soon both containers were empty.  Then I realized what a slob she was.  It was funny but also annoying.  Noodles and pieces of egg had dropped all around her on the bed.  “You’re sleeping on that bed tonight,” I said.  “Are you going to clean it up or what?”

     “I will in the morning.  I’m sleepy”

     She lay down on her double bed right on top of all the slop.  “Good night, Bobby,” she said, in an annoyingly nice voice.  She went right to sleep.

     After a while I turned off the TV set and tried to go to sleep too.  Instead, I lay awake for a long time.  I can never sleep in motel rooms.  Why did I stop at this motel?  If I wouldn’t have stopped at this particular motel, I would have saved myself a lot of agony.

 

13. FRIDAY MORNING

 

I’m sitting in my cell with my pen in my hand.  I’m trying to recall what happened that night in the Memphis Star Motel.  Then I begin to remember the agony.  The agony of hearing people having sex in a motel room. 

     The agony started in the early morning hours.  It must have been about 2:30 in the morning.  I heard squealing noises coming from the next room.  You know how thin the walls in motels are?  Of course you do.  Anyway, I heard these repulsive noises.  “Oooooh!  Oooooh!  Oooooh   Yes.  No.   Yes.”  They were very familiar.  I had heard noises like that all during my childhood—the sounds of white people having sex.  White women act surprised when they have sex and white men act scared.  They act like there’s about to perform major surgery.  Women of color aren’t surprised; they screech like cats.  Men of color just take it in stride as if they were taking a piss.  They’re all business.  I hate the noise of white people having sex.  It’s the worst noise in the world.  Some people think the sound of jackhammers is the worst, but I like that sound compared to white people having sex.

     I sat up in bed, hoping the noise would go away.  But it got louder.  I stood by the wall to listen.  Jenny woke up and lifted her head.  I pressed my right ear against the wall.

     “What is it?” she asked.

     “Nothing.  Go back to sleep.”

     She was wiping her eyes.  Then she started going “Cluck, cluck, cluck” with the back of her throat.  It turned out to be a habit she had developed.  She always went “Cluck, cluck, cluck” in the morning to clear her throat.  She would do it whenever she woke up.  It drove me crazy.  “Bobby, I’m thirsty.”

     “Drink some water.  And stop making noise.”

     “What noise?  Do you think they have a Coke machine here?”

     “I don’t know.”  She made more clucking noises, sounding like a turkey.  It was almost as bad as the sex noise in the next room.

     “Would you stop that?”

     “What?”  She didn’t even know she was doing it.  She kept clucking away.  I kept my ear to the wall.

     There were more squeals and groans and I leaned and listened carefully.  She got out of bed and stood near me.  The squeals and grunts were now accompanied by a knocking sound.  Apparently, the bed was knocking against our wall.  I was disgusted.  I decided to investigate.

    “What’s that?” Jenny asked.  She had stopped clucking long enough to listen to the squeaking.

     “You stay here,” I said and went to the door.

     It was a warm, humid night.  How warm and humid was it.  I’m glad you asked.  When I came out of the air-conditioned room, the night ambushed me like a rodeo cowboy.  The night rapped itself around me like a big, sweaty, fat woman. The night closed in on me like some out-of-control kangaroo.  (How’s that, Mrs. Wilkens?). It was an amazing experience, believe me.  I walked along the window of the next room and Jenny followed me.  I was wearing sweat socks, an undershirt and my denim pants.  My gun was stuck in the back of the pants.  Jenny was wearing her T-shirt and panties.  She was barefooted.  She had pulled her hair into a ponytail and her tangled bangs were in her face.  I wondered if she was letting her hair hang in her face to be sexy.  Most women will wipe the hair from their face, unless they want it to be there.

     She tiptoed behind me as I peeped into the window of the next room.  Through the window we could see the couple that was making noise.  Naturally they were going at it.  They seemed to be having sex as loudly as they could.  They seemed to want to broadcast the fact that they were having sex to the whole world.  It was as if they were saying, “Hey, world, we’re having sex!  Aren’t we great!”  How disgusting they were.

     A naked curvaceous woman with bleached-blond hair, lay on her belly across the bed.  (Mrs. Wilkens, are you impressed that I used the correct past tense for “lie”?). The woman’s face was looking toward the window, right at us.  She was squealing like a pig.  The man was a muscular fellow wearing a large gold chain around his neck.  He was amazing.  He was one of those bald-headed men who comb what little hair they have on the side across their bald dome to hide their baldness.  He was standing in back of the bed and had lifted her legs up.  He was humping her from behind, with a proud expression on his face, as if he were performing some feat of daring.  Just at that moment, the woman looked up and saw us staring through the window.  She smiled and waved at us in between squeals.

     Jenny whirled away form the window.  “Gross.   Come, Bobby.  Let’s go back to our room.”

     “I thought I told you to stay in the room?”

     “I know.  I’m going back now.”  She was shushing me, gesturing with her hands to get away from the window.  She looked at me.

     “So,” I said.

     “Are you coming.”

     I couldn’t move from the window.  I felt frozen.  It was so disgusting it was fascinating.

     “I said go back to the room!”

     All of a sudden, they stopped and sort of got dressed.  They woman stood up and opened the door.  She poked her head out, standing in her bra and panties.

She was standing halfway out the door.  People lose their manners when they stay at motels, I swear.  Anything goes at motels.

    “Hi,” she said.  She was all smiles.  Apparently standing in a bra and panties was quite normal for her.  She probably spent half her time walking around her block in her bra and panties.  She had those fake big lips and those big round fake breasts.  Her lips were painted in two tones.  They were red with black outlines.  Her eyelashes were so long she could have fanned herself with them.  Her hair had been bleached almost whites.  It had that stiff look that hair gets when it is bleached too many times.  She thought she was quite sexy.  I thought she was a joke.

     Jenny smiled back at the woman extra cheerfully, which made me think she was scared.  “Hi,” she said.  “We were just going to get a Coke.  Do you know if there’s a Coke machine around here.”

     “Don’t bother.  The machine’s busted,” the woman said.  “Actually, we’ve got some Pepsi’s inside.  Hank, do we still have some Pepsi’s?”

     “Yeah, Babe.”  Hank’s voice was surprisingly high.  His voice sounded almost like a girl’s voice.  It was in contrast to his muscular body.  Maybe he had built up those muscles to compensate for his girly voice.

     “Would you like to come in for a minute?” the bleached-blond asked.

     “Oh, no.  We have to get back to our room.”  Jenny was tugging at my shirt.  I stood there transfixed.  It was an amazing scene.

     “My name’s Sherry,” the blond said.

     “I’m Jenny.  This is Bobby.”

     “Hi, Bobby and Jenny.  Why don’t you all come in for a minute?”

     “Oh, no.  We were just looking for the Coke machine.  Thanks anyway,” Jenny said.  She started walking down the sidewalk, looking round for a Coke machine.

     “Come on in.  We’ll fix you up with some Pepsi.  We have more than we need.”

     I smiled.  I had an idea.  Not a clear idea just an idea.  It was more of a malicious attitude than an idea.  I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what.  They were so blatant.  They reminded me the scenes I had been forced to witness when I was a kid.   “You know, I think we’ll take you up on that, Sherry,” I said.

     Jenny gave me a look, but I didn’t pay any attention to her.  I was going inside.  Nothing could stop me.  I followed Sherry into her room.  Jenny reluctantly tagged along.  I sat down on one of those ugly motel chairs that always look like they came from a thrift shop, with shiny plastic cushions and metal frames.  Jenny stood by the door and kept the door open.  Hank, a man of about forty, had put on a pair of jeans but was bare-chested.  He had one of those blond-haired chests and the hair went down to his belly, which stuck out like some big, furry balloon.  He probably thought the hair on his belly made up for the lack of hair on his dome.  He sat on the edge of the bed smiling amiably.  Sherry went to the small refrigerator to fetch Jenny a Pepsi.

     I stared at Hank and started remembering things I didn’t want to remember.  Hearing their disgusting sex noises pushed my memory buttons.  It was the same kind of noise I used to hear every time my mother brought home some guy and I’d have to hide in the bathroom.  Sometimes we’d be staying at a motel just like the Memphis Star and she would pick up some guy and bring him to the motel.  Then I’d have to wait in our car or go into the motel bathroom.  I’d have to listen to their idiotic noises all night.  I had gone into Hank and Sherry’s room with a vengeance.

     Sherry handed Jenny a Pepsi and then handed me one.

     “Thanks,” Jenny said.  “That’s nice of you.  Well…”  She started to leave.  The door was still open and she took a step outside, meanwhile pulling on her T-shirt so that it covered her panties.

     “Stay a while,” Sherry said.  She sat on the edge of the bed beside Hank.  “Anyway, I’m Sherry.  But I told you that already, didn’t I?  And this is Hank.”

     “Hi, Hank.  I’m Jenny.”  She smiled sheepishly.  “Thanks for the Pepsi.  We have to be going.”  She tugged at her T-shirt again and glanced nervously at me and rolled her eyes toward the door.  I hardly noticed her.  I was sitting on the plastic chair glaring at Hank.  He was an amazing specimen.

     He turned to me with a friendly, inviting smile.  “And you are?”

     “Bobby.”

     Hank reached out to shake my hand.  He gave my hand one of those manly squeezes.  Somebody had probably told him a bunch of junk when he was growing up about the meaning of a strong handshake.  “A firm handshake is the sign of an honest man.”  Some people believe everything they are told as children.  They think they’re  honest because they have a firm handshake.  They think they’re wonderful because the go to church each Sunday.  They think they’re great because they lift the lid before they pee.  But mainly they think they are a man’s man because they can squeeze the hell out of somebody’s hand.  Simply by squeezing hands, they think they’ve proven that are a solid citizen, despite the fact that they engage in noisy sex in cheap motels.  Don’t let me get started with the various meanings of handshakes. 

     I let old Hank squeeze my hand as hard as he wanted too.  I just kept staring at him with a slight grin.  I was grinning at him as if to say, “You stupid idiot.”

    He ignored my grin.  “So, where are you from?” he asked Jenny.  I could tell he thought she was cute. 

     “We’re from Kansas City,” she answered in a “we’re all friends here, aren’t we” voice.  Hank was looking straight at her, but she was looking at Sherry.  “We’re on our way to Miami.”  She flashed a firm pointed smile at me and took another step out the door.  “Anyway, thanks for the Pepsi.”

     “Miami, that’s nice,” Hank said.  He did not take his eyes of Jenny for even a moment.  “Sherry and I go to Miami Beach every summer.  We always stay at the Pelican Motel.:  He put his arm around Sherry and gave her a squeeze, but his eyes stayed on Jenny.  What a wonderful couple they were, I thought.  “Have you ever stayed there?” he asked Jenny.  She shook her head quickly.  Then Hank finally turned to me.  “How about you, Bobby.  Have you ever stayed there?” 

     I grinned.  I knew just where he was heading.

     “No.  Should I have?”

     He was looking Jenny over from head to toe.  “So, do the two of you swing?”

     “Hank, behave yourself,” Sherry said.  “Don’t mind him.  He has a one-track mind.   They just came in for a Pepsi, Babe.”

     “We’re into exhibitionism and swinging,” Hank boasted in a wondrous show of self-affirmation.  “That’s why we left our curtains open.  Did you enjoy the show?”

     By now I was glowering at Hank.  “No,” I said flatly.

     “What’s a swinger?” Jenny asked.

     “Well, honey,” Frank said, eying Jenny with delight.  “Sherry and I like people to watch us and to join us if they want to,” he explained.

     “That’s very noble of you,” I said with an angry grin.

     “No, not really,” Hank said.  “But it’s honest.  We do what other people would secretly like to do.”

     Hank had a prissy, knowing smile on his bald-headed face, as if he and he alone grasped the secret of life.  He sat up ad folded his arms around his fat, Buddha belly as he generously revealed this tidbit to us newbies.  “It’s very simple,” he added.  “Sex is the core of life.  It’s what life is all about, really.  Look at the lower animals.  ‘They eat, drink and have sex.  Now and then a panther or tiger will chase down a zebra, and it’s not work, it’s fun.   But humans are obsessed with work.  The work, work, work.  And work and compete.  Always competing to find out who is first and who is last.  You see, most people miss the point.  The point is to enjoy yourself during your short time on this earth—to take life with a grain of sex, so to speak.  Ha, ha, ha.”  He looked at Jenny.  She was still standing in the doorway.  “Do you know what I mean, Jenny, honey?  Do you like sex?  Do you believe in enjoying yourself?”

     “Who me?  Of course.  Doesn’t everybody?”

     “You like to party, Hon.  I thought so.”

     “Oh, yeah.  I love to party.  Anyway, Bobby?”  Jenny looked nervously at me.  I was grinning at Hank.  He was beaming at Jenny.

     “Let me ask you something, Hon,” Hank said.  He was looking straight at Jenny and ignoring me.  I guess he was thinking he had those muscles.  Or maybe he was thinking that I was some submissive, skinny guy of color.  He was thinking wrong.   “Sit down, Hon,” he said to Jenny.  “Stay a while.”

     “That’s OK.  We have to be going.”

     Hank was leering at her as if he was expecting her to swoon over his hairy belly.  He was sitting there on the bed posing for her.  His biceps were bulging.  He was truly a wonder to behold.  “Tell me, Hon.  Have you ever seen horses fucking?”

     “Hank, stop it,” Sherry said.  “They’re not swingers.  They just came in for a Pepsi, for Christ’s sake!”

     “I’m just asking, Babe.  Have you, Hon?” Hank continued.  “Have you ever been on a farm and seen horses fucking?  The male horses?  Have you seen them?  They’ve got real big ones.  Some are bigger than others.  You know what I mean?”

     “Hank!”

     Jenny was almost all of the way out the door.  Only her head and shoulders were visible.  “Actually, we should be going back to our room.  We need to get some sleep.  We have a long way to go tomorrow.  Bobby, are you coming?”

     I was smiling at Hank with heart-felt happiness.  I was truly thankful.  I was grateful that he had given me an opportunity.  He was just like all the creeps my mother had brought into our motels.  “You didn’t ask me if I’ve seen horses, Hank?” I said with a big smile.  “Why didn’t you ask me about horses?”

     “I think we should go,” Jenny said.  “Bobby?”

     “Sit down, Jenny,” I said.  “This is getting interesting.”  I smiled at Hank with a great deal of gratitude, glee and perhaps a bit of gusto.  “I guess your cock must be pretty big.  Are you saying you have a horse cock?  Let’s see your horse cock, Hank.”

     Jenny stood in the doorway hugging herself.  Hank turned to me with muscular condescension.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.  Some guys get a little defensive when I talk about the size of my dick.”   He turned back to Jenny.  “Hon, have you ever seen a 10-inch cock?”

     “What?” Jenny turned to me.

     “Have you ever seen an erect 10-inch cock, dear?  Would you like to see one,” Hank smiled.

     “Hank,” Sherry said.  “Stop it!”

     “Bobby?” Jenny said, looking pointedly at me.  “Can we please go?”

     “Ten inches?” I said.  “That’s amazng, Hank.  I’d sure like to see that splendid critter!”

     “Well, I generally show it to women.”  He smiled with fake modestly.

     “If you talk the talk, you have to walk the walk, Hank,” I said.

     “Bobby!” Jenny said again.  “Could we go, please.”

     “Hank!” Sherry said.  “You’re scaring them!   He’s just kidding you,” she said to Jenny.”

     “I don’t feel scared,” I said.  “I want to see it.  I want to see all of it.  All ten inches of it.  Now,” I said.

     I drew out my gun and pointed it at Hank’s crotch.   Sherry gasped.  Jenny jumped.  Hank looked at the gun as if he were trying to remember what his father had told him about guns.  His father had told him about firm handshakes and lifting the lid, but his dad had not told him what to do when a gun was pointed at his 10-incher. 

     Jenny stepped toward me and grabbed my arm.  “Bobby, let’s go.”

     “Oh, my God,” Sherry said.  “He’s got a gun!”

     “What the hell are you doing?”  Hank said to me.  “Whoa!  Why do you have a gun?  We’re just being friendly.  We’re just joking around.”

     “No, Hank, we’re not friends.  I waved the gun at his crotch.  “Unzip your pants, Hank.  Let’s see your wondrous cock.”

     Hank was getting a wee bit nervous but trying to act tough.  “Look, dude.  This is not funny.  You want to put that thing away?”

     “No, I don’t want to put that thing away.  What I want is for you to unzip your pants and show us your 10-inch item.”

     “Bobby!  Bobby!  Let’s just go!” Jenny said.

     “I’m not going to ask you again, Hank.  I’m going to give you one minute to unzip your fly.  Show and tell, Hank.”

     “Man, you are defensive.” Hank said.

     “You have thirty seconds.”

    Hank raised his hands in surrender.  “OK.  OK.  Fine.  You want me to unzip my pants?  I’ll unzip my pants.  What the hell.  He unzipped his pants and looked at me.  “All right?”

     “Take it out.”

     “Come on man.  The joke’s gone far enough.”

     “I said, take it out.”

     “This is crazy,” Sherry yelped, hugging herself.  “Why are you doing this?  I don’t know why he’s doing this.  Is he joking?”  She appealed to Jenny for help.  Jenny stood beside Bobby and shook her head confusedly.

     “Take it out,” I said to Hank again.

     “You want me to take it out?  Is that what you want?  OK.  Fine.  I’ll take it out.”

     Hank took out his penis.  It was red and limp like a big fat worm.  It was significantly less than ten inches long, which I had expected.  It was more like four inches.  It was the moment of truth.  He looked up rather apologetically and his penis also seemed to look up apologetically.  Sherry glanced at the humble organ and held her hand over her eyes.  Jenny was pulling at my shirt.  I looked at Hank with glee.   I enjoyed that moment immensely.  I was remembering all the arrogant men in motels.  I was remembering their haughty laughter.  They were all like Hank.  They all thought their white cocks were special.  I pointed the gun at his special worm as if I were going to dismember it.  I wasn’t really going to shoot it but he had no way of knowing that.

     “I’m going!” Jenny said, and ran outside.  But her head peeped back n and her ponytail swung around as she gawked at me.

     I kept looking at Hank.

     “That doesn’t look like a horse cock,” I said.  “It looks more like a dead worm.”

     “Well, what do you expect, dude?” Hank protested.  “What do you expect under the circumstances?”

    Suddenly, I got another idea. “Make it hard.”

     “That’s kind of difficult right now, if you know what I mean,” Hank said.

     “Come on.  I want to see the magnificent 10.  We all want to see it.  Maybe your wife can help you out.  Help him out, Sherry.  You said the two of you like to put on a show.”

     “Yeah, we do,” Hank said.  “But not like this.”

     “Why is he doing this?” Sherry cried out.  “I don’t understand why he’s doing this.”

     “All right, never mind,” I said.  “Stand up, Hank.”

     “What for?” Hank asked in his high-pitched voice.

     “Just stand up.  Sideways.  And hold your cock out.”

     He stood up reluctantly.  He grabbed his cock.  “Like this?  You want me to hold it out like this?”

     “That’s fine.  Just let it dangle.  Take your hands away.”

     He wouldn’t take his hands away.  He held his precious cargo with both hands. He looked like a little boy about to lose his mother.  I clicked the trigger.

     “Don’t shoot?” Hank begged.  “I was just kidding around.”

     “Bobby, stop!” Jenny said.

     “Oh, my God,” Sherry cried out.

     “I’m sorry, Hank, but I’m going to have to shoot off your cock.  It has to be done.”

     “Why?” Hank asked.  “Just tell me why?  He was funny.  He wanted an explanation.

     “Just because.”

     “Bobby, stop it!” Jenny yelled.

     “This is not happening!” Sherry moaned.

     “Just tell me why?” Hank asked.  He seemed to think it would make a big difference if he knew why I was doing it.  People always think it will make a different if they know why.  But it almost never does.  It usually keeps happening the same way anyway.  But since Hank asked, I decided to tell him why.  “Because you’re too cock-dependent, Hank.  Your self-esteem is connected to your cock and that’s not good, Hank.  Your self-esteem can’t be connected to your cock.  Your self-esteem has to be independent.  Do you understand?  I have to do this so that you can have a truly independent self-esteem which is not dependent to your cock or anybody else’s cock.”

     Hank didn’t agree with my psychological interpretation.  “I don’t know, dude.  I don’t really think I’m that dependent.”  He was holding onto his cock for dear life.

     At that point I couldn’t hold back any longer.  I suddenly broke out with laugher.  I stuck the gun back in my pants and as I laughed and laughed.  At first nobody else was laughing.  Then Sherry began to laugh.  Her laugh was a half cry and a half laugh.  There were tears in her eyes. 

     “Hahaha,” Sherry laugh-cried.  “It was just a joke, Hank.  That wasn’t a real gun, was it?  It was just a toy all a long?  That’s funny.  Wasn’t that funny, Hank?”

     “No, it wasn’t funny,” Hank said, zipping up.  “Not really.”

     “Yes, it was a toy gun,” Jenny said.  “Bobby carries it around to mess with people.  Don’t you, Bobby?”

     “So, this was your idea of a joke?” Hank said, angrily.  “I don’t think it’s funny at all.”  He stood up and came toward me.  He strutted up and stood right in my face.  The hair on his belly was tickling my arm, but I didn’t move.  “You fucking shithead!  I ought to beat your fucking brains out,” Hank hollered into my hear.

     “Hank, no!” Sherry said.  “He was just joking.  It was a joke.”

     “I ought to teach you some manners,” Hank added.

     “Sorry, Hank,” I said.  “Shake.”  I held out my hand but he pushed it away.  I thought if he could give my hand a good squeeze, he’d feel like a man again.

     “Get out of here, both of you,” he said.  He shook his fist at me.  “And you know what you can do with your little toy gun.  You know what you can do with it?  I’ll tell you what you can do with it!”

     Jenny clutched my arm.  I backed out of the door laughing my head off.  Before I closed the door I peeped back in and said, “Happy swinging.”

     “Bobby!” Jenny yanked my hand.

     I was standing outside clapping my arms.

     “Bobby!” Jenny kept saying.  “Let’s go to our room.

     I kept standing there outside Hanks room.  I don’t think I’ve ever had so much funs in my life.

     Hank opened and slammed the door.  He slammed it so hard I thought maybe he would wake up the whole motel.  But he didn’t wake anyone up at all.  You know how it is in motels.  Nobody blinked an eye.  Or a penis.

    

14. SATURDAY

 

I should write about what happened after we got back to our room.  I really don’t want to write about it.  Jenny got me to talk about my mother.  I don’t like to talk about her.  She was the last person I wanted to talk about that night.  But Jenny kept prodding me until I had to talk about her in order to shut her up.  Once she got her mind made up about something, she wouldn’t stop until she got what she wanted.  She had a theory about my mother and wanted to prove that it was correct.

     After we got back into our room I was laughing my head off.  I was hall hoping Hank would hear me laughing.  I wanted him to barge in and give me a reason.  I would have loved to shoot it off.  I fell back on the bed laughing.  Jenny stood at the foot of the bed gazing at me somewhat forlornly. 

     “What did you do that for?” she asked.

     “It was fun.”

     “What’s the matter with you?”

     “Nothing.  He just rubbed me the wrong way, that’s all.  I hate guys who brag about the size of their cocks.  It’s so immature.”

     “And I suppose threating people with a gun is mature?”

     I didn’t answer her.  I didn’t want to let her spoil my moment.  After I had finished laughing, I suddenly became sleepy.  I took off my pants and put my gun down on the lamp table within my reach.  “Turn off the light,” I said.

     “Let me finish my Pepsi.” Jenny said.

     “Then stop jabbering and finish it.”

     “You shouldn’t have done that.”

     “Don’t tell me what to do.  Turn off the light.”

     She swigged her Pepsi with one hand and flipped off the light with the other hand.  She didn’t go to her double bed to sleep.  Maybe she knew how sloppy she had left it after she had gobbled down the egg and macaroni salad   She lay down beside me, propped up on her pillow, sipping the Pepsi.  I could hear her swallowing and later belching the Pepsi.  She must have belched about ten times.  It was driving me crazy.  When she finished belching, she was sighing and twisting and turning in bed.  I could almost hear her thinking.  Whatever it was she was thinking, I didn’t want to know about it.  A neon light was flashing across the bed through the window.  Jenny lay on her side facing me and I could see the neon light on her face changing from red to blue to green.  She sighed and looked at me.  I knew she was raring to talk.

     “Bobby,” she finally said.  “Are you awake?”

     “No.”

     “Bobby?  Did your mom sleep around?”

     “What makes you think that?”

     “I have a sixth sense about people.  I’m psychic.  What sign are you?”

     “Rattle snake.”

     “That’s not a sign.”

     “Go to sleep.”

     “She did, didn’t she?”

     “You’re the psychic.  You tell me.”

     “Bobby, are you thinking about your mom right now?  What was your mom like, Bobby?  Was she mean?  I’ll bet she was mean.”

     “Not really.”

     I had my back to her.  I could hear her behind me, breathing and sighing and thinking.  Suddenly I had a memory.

     “Are you remembering something? she asked.

      “I was six years old.” I had my back to her.

      “What happened?”

      I don’t know why.  For some reason, after joking around with Hank, I felt like talking.

      “I was sleeping on a blanket inside a bathtub in some motel,” I said.  “I heard heavy breathing and grunting.  I heard my mother moaning, ‘Ooooooh.’  I thought something bad had happened to her.  I climbed out of the bathtub and turned on the light.  ‘Mommy’ I called.  I opened the bathroom door and looked into the room.  There were two figures on the bed, thrashing around in the dark.  ‘Mommy?’ I called out again.  The thrashing on the bed stopped suddenly and my mom yelled at me to go back to the bathroom.  The man mumbled, ‘Shit, I didn’t know you had a kid in there.  I’m going!’  I could see him dressing quickly in the dark.  Mom yelled a me again.  ‘Bobby, did you hear what I said.  Get back into the bathroom!  Now!’”

    “I stared at the two figures for a minute, then whirled around and ran back into the bathroom and slammed the door.  I stood with my hack against the door and listened to my mom and the man arguing.  They were arguing about money.  It was always about money.  ‘You owe me fifty dollars,’ I heard my mom say. 

‘Fuck you, bitch,’ came the man’s voice.  I could hear them fighting.  I heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh.  The sound of someone falling on the floor.  My mom groaning.  The slamming of a door.”

     I lay in the dark thinking about this memory and getting angry.  I was angry about the memory and angry with Jenny for bringing it up.  I whirled around and faced her.  The neon light was in her face again.  Her face was blue and red and then green and blue.  Her blue eyes were wide open in the light and she seemed pleased that I had turned around to face her.  She was waiting.  She wanted more.

     “You wanted to hear about my mother?” I asked her.  “Now you have.  It’s ugly.  You want more?”

    “Sure.”

     “Fine.”

     “Tell me.”

     “I’ll tell you about my mother.  My mother was one of the most beautiful women in the world.  I loved my mother.  I still do.  But unfortunately, she didn’t have a clue about how to raise a boy.  Especially a boy of color.”

     I propped myself on my elbow and began to tell Jenny about my mother and my childhood.  The neon was flashing and she belched six more times as I told her the story.  The old, loud air conditioner was rumbling and the cold air filled the room as I spilled out the boring details.  I could see that she was listening intently.  I had never told anybody about my childhood before.  I don’t know why I told her.  Probably, I just wanted to shut her up. 

     “My mother was just a teenager when she gave birth to me.  She was only about sixteen or seventeen.  She had run away from home.  She had a horrible childhood.  Her mother had run off with a salesman when she was two years old, and afterward her father and older brothers sexually abused her.  Apparently, whenever her father was angry about anything he would come home and find something wrong with what she’d done.  Maybe she hadn’t washed a dish right or dusted the baseboards.  It didn’t take much.  And then he would tell her she needed to be punished and would take her from behind on the kitchen table right in front of the brothers.  And then later the brothers would do her as well.  So, she ran away when she was sixteen or seventeen.  At least that’s the story she told me.  I don’t have any reason not to believe her.  She ran away and she became, basically, a hooker.

     “She was a beauty and could probably have run for Miss Universe, but she was a damaged beauty.  So, when I came along, she wasn’t the best mother.  But she wasn’t mean on purpose.  She couldn’t help it.  I don’t hate my mother,” I told Jenny as we lay in bed In the dark.  “She wasn’t a bad person.  She really wasn’t.  She just didn’t know what to do with a colored child.  She was mean.  You were wrong about her.  But she didn’t want to be mean.  You want more?”

     “Yes, more,” Jenny said.

     “My father was a man of color and he had been one of her johns.  She had fallen in love with him.  She had thought he was different from other men because he was quiet and because he was a colored man.  This is what she had told me later.  But when she got pregnant, he left her.  He had wanted her to have an abortion, but she didn’t want that, she wanted to marry him and have his child.  That’s all I know about him.  We never saw him again and she wouldn’t tell me anything else, not even his name.  I would sometimes beg her to tell me about him, but she would always answer, ‘The less you know about him the better.’   She was bitter about him and later she distrusted all colored men.

     “After she had given birth to me, she didn’t want me.  Whenever she was angry at me later on, she would say, ‘I never wanted a colored baby.  I knew you would be trouble, and you are.  You/re the cause of all my misery!’  She didn’t mean that.  She would just say it when she was feeling blue and upset about things.  Nevertheless, from an early age I began to wish I had had a colored mother who understood me.  I never thought my white mom understood me at all.

     “After my dad left her, she was always cranky.  She was always threatening to give me away because I reminded her of him.   Almost every week she threatened to give me away to a colored family.

     Jenny, who was propped up on her elbow, blurted out, “It wasn’t your fault that you were colored!”

     “No, it was her fault,” I said, “because she had sex with a colored man.”

     “It wasn’t fair!” she protested.

     “Life isn’t fair.” I said.   “You want more?”

     “More,” she said.

     I went on with the story.  The memories just started falling out of my mouth.  “I don’t remember much of my early childhood, only what she told me.  She always complained that I would never go to sleep, how I would cry all night when she was trying to do her whore work, and how once, she had been so mad when I kept crying and wouldn’t go to sleep, she had held a pillow over my face and tried to suffocate me.  Later when she told me about this, she would laugh about it.  ‘You were too mean to die,’ she laughed.  ‘You should have seen yourself.  When I held the pillow on your little brown fact, your arms and legs were swinging like hell, and I finally had to stop and laugh.’  Sometimes when she would tell me this story she would laugh like a witch.  But I knew that wasn’t the real her.  I knew she really loved me.  I just held my anger in.

     “Why do you keep saying she loved you?” Jenny wondered.

     “Because she did.  I know deep down she did.  She acted like she hated me, but I knew down deep she loved me.

     “I loved her so much and would have done anything for her.  If she wanted me to go to the bathroom and shut the door while she was with one of her johns, I did it.  If she wanted me to clean the apartment, I did it.  If she wanted me to run to the store, I did it.  I would see her hugging all her johns, but she would never hug me.  I kept going up to her for a hug and she would push me away.   In those days I wanted hugs.  Now I can’t stand them. 

     “When I started school, I began to get into trouble.  I was a bad kid.  I really was.  I made her life miserable and I liked making her life miserable.  I was always getting into fights and being called into the principal’s office and she had to come to school to get me and she hated that.  Sometimes when we got home, she would handcuff me to the radiator and take off my pants and underwear.  ‘You want to make trouble for me?  Then I’ll make trouble for you!’  She would whip me with her belt while I was naked and handcuffed to the radiator.  Sometimes the belt would hit my penis and I would cry out and she would laugh.  “Oh, you want to keep your little brown cock?  Is that it?’  

     “Later the principal of the school suggested that she put me into a reform school, and she was very eager to do that.  I remember the day she left me at this school.   It was the saddest day of my life.  My mother dragged me by the hand up the sidewalk to an old rundown gray building with bars on the windows.  I kept dragging my heels and begging her not to put me into that place.  I promised her I would be good.  But she wouldn’t listen.”

     “That’s terrible!” Jenny said.  “I hate her!”

     “That’s my mother.  You want more?”

     “More,” Jenny said.

     “From then on, I went from one institution to another, and from one foster family to another.  The only thing I learned in reform school was from the other kids—how to commit petty crimes and not be caught.  Some of the foster families were white, some were colored.  The families often tried very hard to be nice, but they were always reminding me of how lucky I was that they had taken me in.  Every year the foster family would find a reason they couldn’t keep me anymore.  Every year I would be going to a new school.  Every year I’d be trying to fit in with a new family.  But I was always the odd man out.”

     “That’s awful,” Jenny said.

     “It wasn’t really bad.  I learned to rely on myself and to be an independent thinker,” I told her.

     “I hate her,” Jenny said, matter-of-factly.

     “Have you heard enough?”

     “More,” she said.

     “The worst times were the times when my mom let me live with her.  I would only live with her a few months and then she’d find a reason why it wasn’t working out and why I she had to find another foster family for me. 

     “I remember when I was about thirteen, she was still a beautiful woman and she would dress and undress in front of me and I kept looking at her body.  I didn’t want to do it, but I kept doing it.  ‘What are you looking at?’ she said to me one day.  ‘Nothing.’  I turned away.  ‘I think you’re getting too old to live with me.’ she said.  ‘No, I’m not.’ I said.  ‘You shouldn’t look at me like that.’ she said.

‘I wasn’t looking at you any way.  I promise not to do it anymore.’ I said.  ‘Yes, you were.  You’re just like all men.  All you think about is sex.  It’s disgusting.  Tomorrow you’re going back to the school.’   Next day, she took me back to the reform school I was attending at the time.  I’ll never forget what she said when she left me there.  She said, ‘Stup sulking.  I’m just doing to you what men have done to me.  Get over it!’  She looked at me and laughed.

     “I think that was the first time I thought about killing her.

     “I feel like killing her too,” Jenny said.

     “When I was fourteen, I started running away from school.  They caught me a few times and brought me back, but eventually I learned how to live on my own.  I lived on the street or in youth hostels and earned money by washing dishes in restaurants or stacking shelves in Woolworth or hustling gay men.  Sometimes I’d give gay men a hand-job and sometimes I’d just take their money and run.  I was always running.  There are hundreds of memories of living on the street, but what good does it do to bring these up?  It just makes me angry.  Anyway, you wanted to know about my mom.  That’s my mom.”

     “Your mom was mean,” Jenny said.  “You say she wasn’t really mean, but I disagree.  I think it was really mean to keep kicking you out!”

     I looked at Jenny in the dark of the shabby motel room and all at once I ran out of steam.  She was lying there looking at me with wide-awake eyes.  Even in the dark I could tell she was very sad.  I had been rambling for what seemed like hours, but actually, it was probably no more than 30 minutes.  I stared at her in the dark.  The neon light flashed across her face and her eyes were blue and puffy.  It seemed she had been crying.  I didn’t pay attention to it.  I didn’t want to know if she was crying.  I didn’t want her pity.

     “I don’t know why I told you all this,” I said, giving her a hard stare.  “It’s all history now.  You wanted to know about my mother.  Are you satisfied now?”

     Her voice was resigned when she spoke.  “When was the last time you saw her?”

     “I don’t know.  When I was twelve.  The last time she put me back into the system and I ran away.  After that, I only called her now and then and she’d talk about herself but never ask about me.  I’d talk to her for a few minutes, but after a while I would get tired of her talking about herself and I would hand up.”

     Jenny suddenly jumped out of bed and started pacing around in the dark.  She was pacing around and around like a mad bull.  Even in the dark I could see her eyes darting around.

     “You must hate your mom!” she almost growled.

     “Why do you say that?” I asked.

     “Because I hate her!” she said.  “So, you must hate her.”

          “Why should I hate her?  I don’t hate her.  She couldn’t help it.  She did the best she could.  Hate is a waste of time.  She didn’t want a colored kid around.  Can you blame her?  She was out for herself.  Everybody in this world is out for themselves.  That’s the way it is.”

     Jenny wasn’t listening to me.  She was pacing around and her eyes were darting.  “Do you have her phone number?”

     “Why?”

     “I want to call her.  I want to call her right now.  I hate her!  I hate her for doing what she did to you!”

     “Come back to bed.”

     “I can’t sleep now.  Do you have her phone number?  I want to call her.  God, I hate her.  People shouldn’t have children if they’re going to treat them that way.  I want to talk to your mother.”

     I turned on the lamp.  I wanted to see her face.  She was amazing.  I had to chuckle when I saw her face.  She was so worked up.  She was pacing back and forth with the angriest scowl I had ever seen.

     “Give me her number!” she ordered.

     “Don’t waste your time.  She’s not worth hating. Anyway, she’s an old woman now.  She’s not worth hating.  I learned that a long time ago.  Only losers hate.”

     She stopped and stood before the bed.  “Do you have her number?”

     “No, I don’t.”

     “Do you know where she lives.  Maybe we can drive there.”

     “No.  Come back to bed.  You need to get some sleep.  We have a long drive tomorrow.”

     She wouldn’t let it go, as usual.  “Do you know where she lives?”

     “I don’t know where she lives.”

     “Yes, you do.”

     “Come to bed.”

     “Can we call her tomorrow?”

     “I said, come to bed.”

     “I’ll come to bed if you promise we will call her tomorrow.”

     “Come to bed.”

     “Can we call her tomorrow?”

     “Maybe.  You need to get some sleep.”

     “I’m not tired.  Promise we’ll call your mom tomorrow.  I have some things to say to her.  I have plenty to say to her.  How dare her treat you that way.”

     “All right!  We’ll call her tomorrow!”  I knew she wouldn’t stop until I I told her that.

     “You promise we’ll call her tomorrow?5t5re  I want to tell her some things and maybe I want to slap her!”

     “We’ll call her tomorrow.  You can talk to her, but you can’t slap her.”

     “Why can’t I slap her?”

     “Because you’ll be on the phone.  You can’t slap somebody on the phone.”

     “Then let’s go to see her.”

     I gave up and stopped talking to her.  I turned off the lamp and rolled over and pretended to snore.  I hoped she would get the message but she didn’t.  She must have paced around until dawn.   Once I yelled at her, “Get your ass in bed, Jenny.”  But she didn’t listen.  As long as she was pacing, I couldn’t sleep.  Anyway, I was also stirred up.  It seemed as if her pacing was in direct proportion to my own festering.  I was festering with anger for a while and then suddenly I was feeling all this love and longing for my mom and I was missing her.  Then I was hating her again and asking myself why I missed her.  I didn’t want to feel anything I was feeling.  I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.

     Finally, she flopped down on her back beside me.  I could hear her sigh and roll this way and that.  Eventually, she settled down.  The sun began to beam through the blinds.  I was almost asleep, when I felt her arm fall onto my back.

     “Bobby?  Bobby?  Are you asleep?”

     “No.”

     “Bobby?  I want to make it up to you.”

     “What are you talking about?”

     “I want to make up for what your mom did.  I can be real sweet, Bobbby.  I’m going to be real sweet to you from now on.  You’ll forget about your mom.  You’ll see.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to touch you.”  She pulled her arm away.  “I know you don’t like being touched.”

     “Go to sleep!”

     “I love you, Bobby.”

     “No, you don’t.”

     “I do.  I really do.”

     “You don’t know what love is.  You’re a kid.”

     “I may be a kid, but I know what love is.”

     “Go to sleep, I said!”

     “I will.  But you need to know that someone loves you.”

     “It’s too late for someone to love me.  I wanted love when I was a kid, but all I got was hate.  After a while, hate plugs up love and you can’t love anymore.”

     “No, no, no!  Don’t say that.  It’s never too late.”

     I was ready to slug her.  If she had carried on much longer, I would have.  To me any talk about love is like a personal assault.  Each word is like a million land mines or bear traps.  They’re fighting words.  It’s all hypocrisy.  People are always talking about love.  Millions of books have been written about it.  Millions of sappy poems have praised love.  Millions of dumb movies and television shows have gone on and on about love.  The reason people carry on so much about love is because they can’t feel it.  If they could feel it, they wouldn’t have to carry on about it.  They talk and talk about love in order to convince themselves and others how loving they are.  The truth is that human beings are too selfish to love.  All they care about is themselves.  Jenny didn’t love me.  She only loved me because she was afraid that I was going to kill her.  That’s how I saw it.

     I was tossing around on the bed and I couldn’t sleep.  “You don’t love me.  You only think you do,” I said to her.  “Stop talking rot.”

     “Yes, I do.”

     “No.  No, no, no.  You’re talking rot.”

     “I’m not talking rot.  I love you.  And I hate your mom for what she did to you.  I wish you’d believe me.”

     “Go to sleep.”

     “You promise we’ll call you mom tomorrow?  I’m not going to sleep unless you promise.”

     “Fine.  I promise.  Now, go to sleep.”

     “You promise?  Do you cross your fingers and hope to die?”

     “I said, go to sleep.”

     “Good night, Bobby.”

     She finally shut up, but by then I was too late.  The sun was glaring into the room like a grinning madman.  It was squatting on the room like some bright-eyed old hen.  It was shining like some dumb cop’s flashlight.  It was beaming—oh, well, I’m sure you get the drift by now.  (Mrs. Wilkens.)  Once it was daylight, I couldn’t sleep by then, no matter what.

    

15. SATURDAY NIGHT

 

I probably should write about what just happened here in the death ward.  I don’t want to write about it but I should write about it while it’s fresh on my mind.  All you women readers out there will be jumping out of your panties to hear this part of the story.  God knows (or Satan knows) I must please all my women readers (all three of them, ha-ha) even though by the time they read this I’ll be dead.  Whatever.

     I had just put this journal down to take a leak when I heard Fritz’s jolly voice.

     “Bobby?  Bobby?  There is someone to see you?”

     I continued peeing.

     “Bobby?  Your wife is here.”

     I pretended not to hear him.   I felt annoyed that she had come.  “I’m pissing,” I told him.  I was standing at the toilet in the corner of the cell but when I heard it was my wife, I stopped peeing.  But I didn’t turn around.

     “Bobby, don’t you want to talk to your wife?”

     “Not really.”

     “She drove all the way from Kansas City to see you.”

     “That’s her problem.”

     Lily had driven from Kansas City several times before and I had refused to see her.  I didn’t want to see her.  I didn’t want to see anybody.  They have a visitors’ room downstairs where you can converse with people through a window with bars on it, but I never went down there.  The last time I had spoken to her was on the telephone a few days after they had arrested me and charged me with eleven of my murders.  She kept wondering if I had really done it.  I had confessed to the murders and it was all over the news.  But she kept asking me over and over if it were true or if I had made it all up.  Now why would anybody make something like that up, I asked her.  But Lily knew I had made up lots of stories during our marriage and I guess she hoped I was doing that now.  She always saw a silver lining in everything.

     I finished peeing, gave the toilet a deliberate flush, and turned around.  I expected to see Fritz standing there, but instead it was Lily.  I guess she had convinced the guards to let her come up to my cell this time, since in her previous trips here I wouldn’t come to the guest room.  She was standing with both hands on the bars and her face protruding into my cell between the bars. 

She had on those false, decorated fingernails that I never liked, and her face was surrounded by the fingernails gripping the bars.  It was like a gloomy face peeping out form the middle of a Christmas tree of decorated nails.   She was usually optimistic, but today there was no optimism at all in her face.  Her eyes we two orbs of confusion and disappointment.  She was skinner than I had ever seen her.

     “Why have you been avoiding me, Bobby?” she said.

     I stayed on the other side of the cell.  “Nothing to say,” I responded.

     “Nothing to say?  Nothing to say?  You’re going to be executed in a few weeks and there is nothing to say?   What about you and me?  Have you ever thought about me?  What am I supposed to tell Lou-Lou and Bobby Jr.?  What am I supposed to tell them about their father?  Pastor Kohler advised me to tell them you died in an automobile accident.  He said I should change my last name and their last names so that they could never find out who their father really was.  Should I do that, Bobby?”

     I sat down on my cot and gazed out of the window.  A flock of sparrows landed in the oak tree and was whistling a bird symphony.  They were turning their beaks this way and that and jumping around on the branches and having a great time.  I smiled at them.  It was amazing how such little birds could make such a big sound.  I found the birds much more interesting than Lily.  She was boring.  She had always been boring, but I had pretended to love her.  I no longer felt like pretending about anything.

     “Bobby, will you talk to me?  What am I going to tell our children?”

     “I don’t care what you tell them,” I said, without taking my eyes form the sparrows.  “Tell them whatever you like.”

     “Don’t you love your children, Bobby?  Don’t you care what you’ve done to them?  Don’t you care what you’ve done to me?”  I didn’t answer.  I was watching the sparrows jump from branch to branch.  “Bobby, would you look at me?   I’m standing right here.  Would you at least look at me?”

     I gazed at the sparrows a little longer and then turned to her.  I was suddenly fed up with her self-pity and her guilt-tripping.  Obviously, she thought that if I looked at her, I was going to melt and maybe even go down on my knees to her.  That’s the way white women think.  She thought if I fixed by eyes on her big blues I was going to be filled with gigantic paroxysms of remorse and longing.  A flood of popcorn tears would drool from my eyes and I would bury my face in her billowing hair.  No chance.  I didn’t feel a sliver of remorse about anything and knew I never would.  She had no idea of who I really was, and I decided to give her a dose of reality.

     I stood up and walked toward her.  “OK, I’m talking to you, Lily.  Now what?”

     I stared right into her eyes.  I knew exactly what I was doing.  I had never looked at her like that before.  She had never before seen the real me.  I stared at her the same way I had stared at every woman I had killed.  I felt nothing about them and I now felt nothing about Lily.  At one time she had been useful.  At one time I had wanted to have a wife and kids so that I could act out the charade.  Now I hated her just as I hated all the women I had killed.  She was just another white woman who secretly thought she was better than me.  Now that she was no longer useful, I could have killed her just as easily as I had killed any of the others.

     My stare bore through her like a 30 odd 6, and she started to tremble and cry.  I’m sure she thought that her crocodile tears would get to me, but I just laughed.

That made her snap out of it.  She stepped back and gaped at me like a mother would gape at a naughty child.

     “I don’t even feel like I know you,” she said.  “Who are you?  You’re like some stranger I never met before.”

     “I am a stranger.   You never met me before.  Now you’ve met the real me.”

     “I don’t like the real you.”

     “Join the crowd.”

     She continued to gape.  She was studying me as if I were a strange new fossil.

     “Did you ever love me?”

     “No.”

     “Did you ever love your kids?”

     “No.”

     “You don’t mean that.”

     “I do.”

     “Why are you acting this way?”

     “I’m not acting, Lily.  This is me.”

     “You’re just saying that to tease me.”

     “Have it your way, Lily.  People usually do.”

     She let go of some more huge crocodile tears.  She stood there behind the bars gaping at me, trying with her ice cream mind to understand me.  But I had a vanilla pudding mind hiding a shark mind.  How can an ice cream mind understand such another mind like that?  She sobbed and gasped and then sobbed some more.  Fritz came lumbering up behind her and took her arms.  He gave me a look of judgment.  Fritz was one of those sentimental guys who thought men should never make women cry.  In Fritz’s world, men were only supposed to smile submissively at women and open doors for them.  Men were only supposed to listen to women’s irrational gobbledygook and nod with eternal awe.  Men were only supposed to be like the mirror in “Snow White” and affirm over and over that women are “the fairest in the land.”  And if we don’t—well, you know what to Snow White.  Fritz stared at me without any knowledge or concern about Snow White.  He only knew that I had violated the code of ethics for men and he was ready to give me a good slap In the face.

     “Bobby, is that the way to treat your wife?” he said?

     “Yes, Fritz, that’s exactly the way to treat my wife.”

     “You are crazy.”

     “I probably am.”

     Lily finally stopped sobbing and gasping long enough to get out some words.  “You’re…you’re…not my husband!”

     “I never really was,” I replied.

     “Oh, my God!”  It had suddenly dawned on her how evil I was.  “You have now lost me forever!” she cried out.  “You may not think that is important, but someday you might!”

     “No, Lily,” I replied and smiled very brightly.  “I won’t ever regret you.   Sorry.  But that’s the truth.  Goodbye and good riddance.”  She burst into more sobs. 

     “Oh, oh, oh!” she sobbed.  “That’s all!” she spat out.  I went back to my cot and sat down and looked at the sparrows on the oak tree.  Most of them were gone except for three or four stragglers.  I looked at the stragglers and I identified with them.  The flock had left them and they were still on one branch jumping around.  It was a gnarly branch.  I wondered how the branch had gotten so gnarly.

     Lily stood there sobbing for a while, but I didn’t look at her again.  I smiled at the gnarly branches.  She was probably trying to think of something gnarly to say to me, something that could have some impact on me, something that could cut me open and could shock me to my senses.  But she shook her head after a while and I could tell that she realized that nothing would work with me. 

     Finally, Fritz escorted her across the room to the door.  I could hear her sniffling all the way down the outside hall.

     Afterwards Fritz returned and stood outside my cell trying to stare me down.  He was hopping mad.  But he didn’t say anything.  He could sense that nothing would work with me, just like Lily had.  But he was still mad about it.  He could sense that nobody mattered to me anymore.  Maybe nobody ever had.