Clown in the Moonlight Read online

  Linda's straightened herself out. She lights two more cigarettes, and goes to place one in my mouth. I block her arm and she pulls a face and says, "Oh, you're one of those. Can't kiss a girl after you cum in her mouth? Won't smoke a Marlboro if my lips have been on it first?"

  She hands me the pack and I clamp a filter between my teeth and push in the lighter. It pops thirty seconds later and I raise it to the cigarette and puff heavily behind the wheel. She sits there brooding, smoking. I'm no longer quite as deviant or dangerous because I don't want to eat myself.

  Paramedics are placing a sheet-covered gurney into the back of an ambulance. The contours are all wrong. There's no way to tell if it's a man or a woman or a kid. The faces lined up on the sides of the road are nearly featureless. We clear the area and I gun it, back wheels chirping on the rain-slick tar. The windshield wipers thunk in perfect rhythm with my heartbeat.

  She says, "There's a party at Gwen's tomorrow night. Ricky will be there."

  It's a dare. A taunt, a challenge. It's a summons. I ought to drop an anonymous tip and call in Gary's body, but I'm a little worried it'll somehow get back to me. I don't need cops bracing my ass again. I don't need more violations. I don't need more time in the stir or in the bin.

  Besides, I want to meet him.

  "There's going to be mescaline. Have you ever tried it?"

  I have. I didn't like it. I don't understand how anyone can. I've tried all the psychotropics. Most of us on the ward have. They leave their fingerprints behind on our brains.

  "I thought he was the king of acid?"

  "He'll have plenty of LSD too, if you prefer that."

  She knows I don't. She knows I don't partake. I haven't had so much as a beer in two years. I'm clean. I have to stay clean. Liquor and drugs only loosen the chains of my rage. I'm not going back to the stir. I'm not going back to the joint.

  She's at my ear, nibbling. "Don't be upset."

  I'm not. This has all happened many times before, like a well-rehearsed ballet. It's the thing I fear the most, if I fear anything at all. That I won't be able to fuck a chick in a park without her showing me a satanic sacrifice. That I can't walk up a dirt path without a member of some group like the Knights of the Black Circle turning up. That I can't stand at the fridge of a convenience store buying beer without a murderous girl with razor wire in her hair asking me to take a ride. It happens in smaller or larger form, everywhere I go. They find me or I find them, often in my dreams.

  Even in juvie there were mutts with infernal or angelic script tattooed across their chests and backs, phrases in ancient Arabic or Assyrian they'd found on the Internet. In Bellvue there were entire wings devoted to the whack jobs who claimed to have made love to the Devil, or been raped by him, or who'd had their children eaten by him, or who'd murdered their babies in the name of him. And there were twice as many who said the same things about Christ.

  Group therapy was something else with that bunch.

  I think of my old man when he was in prison. One again I wonder how he survived. He's a tough prick but not nearly as tough as he thinks he is, and overestimating yourself is what brings the animals to your flanks. They must've smelled the terror he tried to hide beneath his hard man exterior. I know I do.

  My father has no apprehension about telling me what he had to do to survive. He goes into great detail about shanking Aryans and Mexicans and blacks. He hates queers but explains without irony how he raped new fish. It's all true and all half-true. Most of what he did he did because he was a bitch. I imagine him face down on his bunk while a D-Block train formed behind him, his hate a living thing within him that ten or twenty other men try to dig out of his guts, inch by inch.

  My father's fists are like steel. My father telling the doctors and teachers and truancy officers how clumsy I am. My father explaining how I trip over skateboards. How I run into fences trying to catch left field drives. My father, lying his ass off, still afraid of the world. And worse, looking at me when I'm nine and fully understanding that by the time I'm nineteen, he will tremble when I enter the house.

  Linda talks about Gwen. They're best friends even though we've never hung out with her. I sense more than a little jealousy and rivalry. So that means Gwen's a looker. They've fought over boys, they've traded lovers, they've done their best to ruin each other's reputations. Linda sounds like she wants to share me with Gwen. I look at her and can't even remember how or when we met.

  From second to second, even as I stare at her, I can hardly recall her face.

  "Have you ever killed anyone?" she asks.

  4.

  At the party, they're all talking about Gary Lowers. Nobody liked him much. They're glad he's dead. Some of them think it's funny. Some of them are properly awed that he lasted as long as he did. Many of them have already seen the body. They describe his face, what's left of it. Somebody supposedly brought along gardening shears and took his pecker as a souvenir. A girl mocks him. "I wuv my mommy. I wuv her so much." The rest crack up.

  It seems like Ricky Kelso's led every other kid here up through Aztakea Woods. Or they've led each other, the way Linda led me. She's over in the corner drinking a slow screw against the wall with Gwen and Gwen's boyfriend, a cat named Prill.

  Wherever I go, there's Gwen. She's a looker all right. Cheerleader beauty, raven hair, pursing her lips, snarling, laughing, all the right curves, her dark eyes on me. She cuts me off whenever I try to cross the room. She stands close enough that her large tits crush against me. Kids dance around us. She acts like they keep pushing her into me. They're not. Once her lips brush mine. I taste cherry lipstick. She smiles and gives a throaty laugh. My groin stirs. She spots my half-erection. She laughs harder and eases away into the throng.

  I shake my head, knowing how some of tonight will play out and wondering about the rest. Prill follows Gwen at a distance and glowers at me, his blue eyes blazing. He's a fullback on the school team and tried to crush my hand when he shook it earlier. At first he was startled when he couldn't, and then he was impressed, and finally the fear set in. For any of us, for all of us, the smallest, strangest minor disruption can petrify us.

  But apparently not corpses of classmates. Someone puts a mixed tape in and everybody starts to dance. They're wild and passionate in their movements. They grind and rub against one another, every twist and bend sexual and full of need. It's a show in itself. I smell weed burning and I spot a few kids taking hits of acid, popping pills. Bottles of hard liquor are standing everywhere, the keg in the corner has a ring of punks around it doing keg-stands. I'm in the corner slugging a glass of orange juice, pretending it's a screwdriver, keeping a clear head, but even that's getting harder and harder to do. I keep an eye out for Ricky.

  I haven't seen my father in five days but I hear his voice hissing in my ear, like he's hovering right behind me. It makes me want to turn around, but I don't know what I'd do if I actually ever found him there. Kill him, or go insane.

  Linda is dancing with Prill in the living room to a warbly muted pop-punk song cranking from four speakers tilted forward. She's trying to make me jealous. She wants me to beat the hell out of Prill here in front of everyone. She's got nothing against him. In fact, I'm sure she wants him, wants to steal him from Gwen. She catches my eye and makes certain I see her cupping Prill's ass and pulling him tighter and tighter to her.

  Gwen keeps the boys on edge like rival dogs about to leap on a skittering animal. The night's got to end in more blood. It's on everybody's mind. They saw the effect of murder but missed out on the bleeding. It leaves them wanting. The lust is bright in their faces. They need to see the fresh red pumping. It's affecting their fantasies and dreams. It's all they're thinking about, all they want now.

  The small talk is puerile and insipid. I drink my juice and act the ex-con. My eyes are narrowed. I check hands for shivs. I don't chase away anyone who approaches me, but I don't respond, I don't participate. I'm an outsider, maybe like Lowers himself. They've got me dead in the woo
ds already with a thousand ice pick holes pumping liver bile and brainpan fluid and little arcing founts of blood.

  There's a tap at the dark window behind me. I look. I see nothing, but I imagine it's a night bird that's followed me back from Aztakea. I picture the black trees bowing and scratching for my attention.

  Gwen finds me in the crowd. She's a little miffed that I'm not making a play for her. Having a football hero boyfriend isn't enough. Having fifty other guys foaming over her isn't enough. She needs us all.

  She points her tits at me in accusation and says, "So are you a shy guy, a wallflower? You seem like such a shy guy. Come dance with me." She tugs the glass of juice from my hand and draws me forward into the center of the living room. I resist, but my resistance draws even more attention, kids looking our way, Prill practically snarling. Gwen's hair hangs in her eyes, and she stares at me with heat and hate and want. She lures me across the floor, where we grind into each other and bang around with the rest of them.

  I wonder who the other members of the Knights of the Black Circle might be. I wonder if they're brushing against me now, marking me with death symbols, scrawling names of power casually against my back. I imagine the Angel of Death arching high against the silver clouds, swooping down, alighting on a nearby roof, waiting for me to leave.

  I'm a good dancer too, in an old-school sort of way. My mother taught me when I was a child. She'd turn the record player up and really cut loose. Music somehow soothed my childhood fevers. We'd clasp hands and she'd swing me around on the freshly waxed kitchen floor, the soles of my feet charged in cotton socks, as I slid and learned how to shake my hips. She'd gyrate and groove. When my father got home from work, he'd find the two of us laughing and sweating. He'd stomp inside hard enough to make the 78s skip and ask, "What have you two been doing? Fucking?"

  It's an exercise in self-control that Linda manages to hold back for nearly five minutes before she beelines for me and Gwen, dragging Prill along with her. He can barely sway his slow, bulky body. They dance beside us and she's in his arms, riding against him hard while he does a box step, barely lifting his feet. She glares at Gwen and they show each other their perfect teeth. This has nothing to do with me or Prill or anyone else, except maybe Ricky.

  Linda looks like she's having fun but I see the real her rising to the surface, covetous, craving. Her nails are like catclaw barbs. She raises one hand to scratch at Gwen's face but I catch her wrist and draw her off. I give Prill a little shove towards his girl. Linda heaves a deep breath, about to let loose with a scream or a slur, but I smooth my lips over hers and swallow her rage. In a few seconds she twists and twines in my arms and rubs her groin on mine. She's not wearing panties tonight either. It's not because of me. Or Lowers's corpse. I know she's got her heart set on fucking Ricky Kelso tonight.

  The kids who are tripping wander around staring at their hands or the lights, laughing wildly, talking gibberish or crying because they see ghosts. Nobody else notices them much. Someone switches the tape and a heavy beat bangs on the walls and the mood of the house shifts. The party gets a little angrier.

  The liquor dwindles. Mescaline, mushrooms, and acid pass from hand to hand. Ten pizzas show up and the delivery guy at the door gets stiffed. The garbage pies slide into the crowd and everybody starts eating. He drifts around bitching, trying to collect money. Someone yanks his hat off and flings it across the room. He makes an effort to collect the boxes and pull slices from greasy hands. Cheese and sauce hit the carpet. He's considered a drag. A couple of mutts punch him, lightly. A couple of girls kiss him, sloppily. The pizza boy begins to dance, clumsily. Punks doing keg-stands topple into the wall. Framed prints of Van Gogh's Starry Night and Self-Portrait In Straw Hat shatter.

  They laugh. The talk grows louder. Lowers's name goes around the room again, passed from one to the next like a virus. Everybody's getting sick.

  One girl nearly drops into my arms, tripping, trembling as if suffering from chills brought on by pneumonia. I hold her for a second before she shakes out of my hands. Gwen brings her a shot of tequila and they giggle and French kiss.

  At my shoulder Linda says, "Do you want her?"

  "Which one?"

  "Gwen, of course."

  There's no right answer. She doesn't care anyway. Maybe she's just pawning me off. I don't really mind. I was expecting it even before our poisonous clench in front of Lowers's body. We can't hold onto each other because we can't hold on to ourselves.

  The breeze is stiff and the house groans. Windows rattle. It's raining again. I need some air and slip through the throng to the back door and out into the wet yard.

  It's everything my father would kill for. For a bitter, ex-con, Neanderthal prick he's got a highly romanticized notion of what a happy home life should be.

  This is his dream. A four-bedroom house in an upper middle-class neighborhood on a full acre with a perfectly trimmed lawn and some mature landscaping. He talks in his sleep. He covets with a fury. He hates the well-to-do, college-educated man. He hides in dark alleys. He keys cars. He lurks behind garbage cans. He waits in the bushes. He watches the rich through their well-lit bay windows and jacks it to adolescent girls climbing out of the shower. He destroys tiny tokens of a better life. He takes a bat to fancy mailboxes. He stamps on those little micro-lamps that border stone walkways. He cuts Christmas lights. He scatters lime around rose gardens. He pisses in ponds and kills koi.

  My old man, I listen to him confess in his stupors and I deny him the absolution he doesn't want anyway. He hated being married but wanted a wife. He hates me but wanted a son. He jabbers on drunkenly night after night. I imagine how his cellmate must've stuffed sock or cock in his mouth to shut him up.

  I lean back against the stoop railing and smoke a cigarette. The hot night is full of the smell of sex and sea and sap. The sky is the color of a blacksmith's hearth. Wind plies the trees and they sway and stoop. Black birds are thick in the branches, leering intently. Pellets of rain scratch at my face. Torrents overburden the gutters. The storm is back. I imagine Gary Lowers, faceless, turning over and drawing up his blanket of dead leaves, and shuddering in loneliness beneath them.

  5.

  I finish my cigarette and peer in through the screen door. Ricky Kelso walks into the living room and a hail goes up. I know him the second I see him, even before they call out his name. He basks in his minor glory, his dirty wild hair hanging in his dirty wild eyes. He's tripping so hard on something he can barely stay on his feet. Or maybe he's just high on his celebrity turn at murder.

  I step inside. I notice he's carrying Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible in his back pocket. He leaves the paperback hanging about halfway out so everybody can spot the title. Kids point. Kids giggle. Van Gogh stares in his straw hat, his hacked ear covered. Baphomet, the Goat of Hell, glares back at everyone who looks. Several kids turn away even as several other punks step closer.

  From Ricky's jacket pocket hang a few bags of PCP. I can see why Lowers reached out and snatched the drugs. It's bait. It's what Ricky wants you to do.

  Gwen gives him a loving hug. So does Prill. So does the pizza guy. So does Linda. There's real emotion in her clench. She's never grabbed me like that. For a second I'm envious. My mother used to hold me like that while my fever spiked and I raved.

  My mom, she'd press her lips to my brow and say, "You won't always be sick."

  But I have been, and so's Ricky. His frenzied gaze roves the room. His expression shifts depending on who he sees. Lust, hate, greed, jealousy, resentment, even some true loving sentiment. He has true friends here among his former classmates. There's trust, laughter, long histories, shared fate.

  When his eyes fall to me his face goes slack. For an instant he looks like a child, innocent and full of wonder. He tilts his head in surprise. He frowns in puzzlement. I'm probably doing the same thing.

  He begins to move to me before he remembers who he is.

  Who he is, what he's done, what his plans are, and exactly how he
's going to wind up. I start towards him. The throng gets in the way. That's their only purpose, to hold the two of us apart.

  In Ricky's honor, the music shifts. They put on heavy metal. The lyrics are as inane as their conversation. Hair band front men in eyeliner and headbands scream about Lucifer, Abomination, Leviathan, Pandemonium, the arch-dukes of the inferno. Guys around me mimic their heroes, make the sign of the horns, hold up their lighters, and sing along. More weed comes out. More acid, hash, mescaline. Somebody's made a liquor run. My mouth waters for whiskey. The house fills with the sweet stink of burning mary jane, and my head lightens a touch.

  Linda is very stoned. We make out in the corner for a few minutes. Then she takes me by the wrist and leads me down the hall to Gwen's bedroom. Gwen is already there, taking sips from a bottle of tequila, smoking a joint, naked in bed.

  6.

  It's what I expect. They fight over me in a silly, endless, half-hearted, territorial war of attrition. They treat me like a pack mule that isn't moving up the canyon trail quickly enough. They beat my back. They dig their nails in, bite, wrench me one way and then the other. They straddle and pound and chomp. I'm bleeding from a dozen tiny wounds. This has nothing to do with me. After a while they begin to go at each other. It starts off mean and eventually becomes tempestuous. It would be a turn-on if it wasn't so predictable. They love themselves, and they're so much alike that they love each other, in a self-hatred kind of way. They're ravenous. I watch for a while. I participate when they let me. They command each other to do filthier and filthier acts. They demand I abuse them. I comply. I pulse. I grow charred. I can't degrade them deeply enough for their satisfaction. Prill is at the door, listening. He kicks at the knob twice but the lock holds. What did he expect? How could he not know? The girls devour me. I clamp my eyes shut and watch the shadows move on the other side of my burning red eyelids. I see Gary Lowers's eyeless face turning in the rain to look at me. He implores me to do something. I don't know what. There's no hope for justice or redemption anymore, he'll never rest, and neither will I. Maybe he just wants a grave, even a shallow one. I could go back and bury him, but what's the point? The dirt has rejected him. The kids will make fun of him just the same. I wuv my mommy. I love my mother too. I miss her more and more every day. My father calls her name out in the night. He slams his fists into the walls like he's beating her again, but she's finally beyond his reach. It's slowly killing him, not having her anymore. He sometimes stands in my bedroom doorway at dawn, but I'm always awake and ready. He wants me dead or he wants me to kill him. Maybe both. I know I'm capable. Gwen and Linda roll across the mattress. They're on the floor, they're on the desk. They're spread against the window. They muffle their cries with each other's flesh. Their nails groove the sill. Branches flail in the breeze, wanting to scratch the girls, wishing them to bleed more deeply. Gwen tumbles across the night stand and Linda pounces. I join her. The bitter taste of blood, tequila, pussy, and shit fills my head. At one point I tear strips from the sheets and use them to bind the girls. First one, while we work on her. Then the other. Until I stand above them, alone, rigid, in the darkness, all the light bulbs shattered. We see each others' eyes by moonlight. Their knotted gags are too tough to chew through. It's not so different from what happened to Lowers, in its own way. Sex transcends itself, a fusion of violence and sacrifice. I stand, waiting, my pulse in tune with theirs, with Ricky's. The walls throb with bass guitars and percussion. Snatches of lyrics catch my attention. I lean over the bed. Linda asked if I'd ever killed anyone. I hiss at her, "Yes." I do things to them with whatever I can find in the desk drawer, in the closet, under the bed, with my body. It's loud and merciless. By the time I cut them loose they're both sobbing, clinging to each other and quivering, sated, terrified and cowed, and I know I have to leave. The storm wants inside. Its force can't match my own. Rain on the window scrawls out my past and hints about the future. The glass trembles as if pecked by the beaks of crows. I imagine my father out there peeking in, wanting in. The girls lick the running blood from each other. They dress me before they dress themselves. They thank me.