Toxicology Read online

  Now, at the far end of the parking lot, two crows were going at it on the uppermost branches of a red oak tree. The birds pecked wildly at each other, their squawking ugly and shrill. Mimi wasn’t sure if they were fighting or fucking, but she was transfixed. She lit a cigarette.

  Gimme a smoke, Carmelo said.

  What am I, your enabler? Mimi snickered, handing him the pack of American Spirits. The smaller of the two crows flapped its bloodied wings and flew off to safety. The other preened and strutted on the tree branch, cawing in triumph.

  Carmelo took a deep drag and punched in Frank’s number on his cell. Frank’s ancient voice croaked something like hello.

  Uncle Frank? You need to come out here.

  Carmelo?

  You need—

  The old man made choking sounds. They found her???

  It’s bad, Carmelo said. Is—Carmelo hated saying her name—Evie there with you? You shouldn’t be alone.

  Nobody. Frank wheezing and sobbing. Nobody’s here.

  Mimi decides she wants to hear the old man grovel. She tugged on her brother’s sleeve. Put him on speakerphone, she whispered. Carmelo frowned but did as he was told. He took another hit off the cigarette before speaking. You’re her father, Uncle Frank. Mimi and I have no authority. You’re the one who’s supposed to deal with all this . . . stuff.

  I just got out of the hospital, Frank said. I’m sick.

  Sick old bastard, Mimi muttered, loud enough for Carmelo to hear.

  Can’t travel, Frank whined. Doctor’s orders. Asthma, diabetes, psoriasis, my heart—you name it, I got it. They did a biopsy the other day. Found a lump in my—

  Agnes was beaten to death. Or maybe she killed herself by banging her own head against a wall. One thing for sure—they left her body in the woods. Carmelo spit out the words, wanting to inflict pain.

  Who’s they? What the cops have to say? Frank’s tone was guarded and no longer pitiful. You tell them how to find me? Don’t tell them anything.

  Mimi couldn’t stand it any longer and grabbed the cell from Carmelo. She was a slave! They left her in the woods! A bear ate parts of her body! Don’t you fucking even give a shit?

  The old man fell to sobbing again. Why do you hate me so much? I took care of your brother and you when—

  I’m gonna make a movie about Agnes, Mimi said. She was on fire now. I’m gonna make a horror movie about her life and everyone in it. Including you.

  ELEANOR DELACROIX HAS A COLD

  At the appointed time, we sent a car service to pick up Delacroix in Manhattan. Volga was packed with a diverse, more-rowdy-than-usual audience that night, everyone eager to see and hear the legendary author. The reading was scheduled for 8:00 P.M. At exactly 7:45 the town car pulled up. I was waiting outside, ready to escort Delacroix into the bar. The driver opened the passenger door, and the filmmaker Mimi Smith was the first to emerge, followed by a long-legged beauty whose face looked terribly familiar. And no Eleanor Delacroix.

  Needless to say, I was furious. Before I could open my mouth to ask where she was, Smith held up her hand. I’ll explain when we’re inside, Rajiv. Let’s just go ahead and get started. We made our way through the standing-room crowd. The atmosphere was festive and full of anticipation. I went up to the podium and introduced Mimi Smith.

  Eleanor Delacroix can’t be here tonight, Smith said. She has a cold. She’s come down with that awful bug that’s been going around—Are you gonna fucking boo all night, or let me speak? Smith paused, then asked me to fetch her a shot of Patrón. Actually, Rajiv, you may as well make that a double, Smith said. And a Diet Coke for Darlene. She waited at the podium for the crowd to settle down before continuing with her dramatic introduction. Eleanor Delacroix wants you to hear a brand-new piece that she’s written. Are any of you interested, or should we just get drunk and go home?

  Enough with the feeble foreplay, Mimi whoever you are! Get on with the show! a very old, hunchbacked man shouted from the bar. I don’t have much time left on this piece-of-shit earth! (After Googling critic Leonard Schilling and finding out that he was still very much alive, of course I’d made sure to invite him to the Delacroix event.)

  Okay, asshole, whoever you are, Smith responded with a smile. Moving right along. Darlene Drayton’s here. Darlene starred in a little movie I made called Blood Wedding—maybe some of you have seen it. Anyway, Darlene’s gonna read from Eleanor Delacroix’s new work, so new I can’t remember if it even has a title. Darlene? Come on up here, Darlene. (All hell broke loose—clapping, cheering, stomping—as the statuesque and sexy actress strode up to the podium, Diet Coke in hand.)

  We never heard from Delacroix about her no-show at Volga. We were mystified and saddened by the news of her disappearance and presumed death in the days that followed. Permission to publish Monologue of Desire in this special issue was granted by Mimi Smith, the designated executor of Delacroix’s estate.

  —Rajiv Gill, 2009

  MONOLOGUE OF DESIRE

  I was beautiful. Some of you went so far as to say I was possessed.

  Even as a child, I could smell your fear and unease, your jealousy and confusion. Who and what was I? Your endless speculating about the dubious origins of my exotic looks and mystifying gender was amusing to me then and still is now. Possibly Caucasian, possibly not.

  Object of desire, vain young thing of fading beauty, altar boy, sacrificial virgin, fugitive, shape-shifter. For months I eluded anxious captors, hiding in plain sight. For months I carried a gun, stolen from the lover I killed one night with a hammer. There were other things I stole from my beloved: an ancient gold coin, possibly Roman, which I later pawned; his leather jacket, which I had always coveted; one thousand U.S. dollars in cash, which came in quite handy; his manuscript of poetry, which did not.

  Here’s what made me really happy—I stole his Mercedes, which I drove across the desert without stopping to rest or eat. How long did it take? Who knows? What happened to the car? Who knows? Perhaps I left it on a side street in some rural village, the engine still running. Perhaps I doused it with gasoline and watched as it burst into flames. Who knows?

  On a broiling day like any other day, I slip unnoticed into the desolate coliseum. The hammer and gun—a nine-millimeter Browning pistol—are artfully concealed by my dead lover’s jacket. It is too hot to wear anything, but I have no choice. The hammer and gun—my props, if you will—cannot be revealed until the very end of my performance.

  I am the first to admit: I have sinned.

  I am the first to admit: I used to have style.

  I am the first to admit: There was a time.

  I am the first to admit: I was the chosen one, before bits of my face started falling off, before my songs became predictable, my dance no longer dazzled, and the audience—fickle audience!—got ahead of me. Before I left behind a trail of corpses.

  Being wanted comes so easy at first. Eat like a pig, never gain a pound.

  My parting words of wisdom to you: Forget substance, babe. It’s about style.

  Once upon a time, I was a little girl with a forked tongue, my head of glossy ringlets spinning like a top. My blind mother had herself nailed to a cross once a year and rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. I wore a pink flannel nightgown, avoided my father, prayed with my mother, wet the bed every night. The black dog came to me in dreams. The black dog whispered in my ear, taught me the rules of desire. The black dog leaped through the bedroom window night after night, kept my head spinning.

  My voice changed without warning. My beard grew, and I learned to shave. There were blessings. There were curses. I began to speak in tongues. People paid to hear me growl, to see me eat fire. A born performer, they all gushed. No doubt about it.

  At fourteen I trade the flannel nightgown for a sleek red jumpsuit. My hyena laugh doesn’t quite fit the picture, but none of you seem to mind. Life of the party. It was uncanny, really. I always knew which name to drop and how to work the room.

  Don’t need the gym or th
e pool at first. Physique trim and tight, muscles oiled and gleaming. Without ever having to break a sweat, mind you.

  Dream come true: Eat like a pig, never gain a pound.

  I peaked at nineteen. But before that? Glorious. I knew what was important. I could dance and throw a punch, dive through flaming hoops and get paid.

  My mother called pig lechón. Which I, the child, found quaint, chalking it up to some bit of faraway tropical-paradise lingo, from some faraway tropical island where—if you bought into the delicious bullshit flying fast and loose out of my blind mother’s mouth—suckling pigs were slaughtered, roasted, and devoured every minute of every hot fucking delicious day.

  My father leaves one morning. Goes out for cigarettes and never comes back. Next thing we know, he sells our house right out from under us. Mother gets in bed, crawls under the duvet, plucks out her own eyes, and keeps praying. Her faith is deep and bottomless. An abyss.

  I love to get high. You remember how I was famous for my irony and biting, mordant wit when I was high; you remember my astonishing gift for mimicry. You remember how I, object of fading youth and fading beauty, always aimed to please.

  In this quiet arena, in the center of this scorching field of red clay, I gaze at the rows of empty seats that surround me and listen hard for the roar of absent fans. Demanding, angry, excited fans. Thousands of them, millions of them. Impatient lovers and haters chanting in unison, screaming my name. Heaven.

  I disrobe quickly, relieved to shed my rotting shoes and rotting socks, the greasy jeans and shirt I’ve been wearing for months. Months! Last to go are the hammer, Felix Montoya’s leather jacket, and the loaded gun—where to put the fucking loaded gun? My bloodshot gaze wanders over to The Bed of Urine-Soaked Sheets, epicenter of an elaborate installation by the most famous writer of them all, Anonymous.

  I love women and artists and writers, I love artists who have cunts and writers who have cunts. Don’t you? I’ve spent hours in galleries and museums all over the world, pored over books of art history, seriously flirted with the idea of becoming a curator or a pimp. But to be an artist—

  ?

  Define Neverland.

  A glimpse of the fabulous universe I once knew: jungle, tent, telescope, dollhouse, trumpet, swimming pool, prayer book, mother, boxing gloves, needle, crucifix, tennis ball, vial, father, ruby slippers, buttons of ivory, sister, cloisonné beads, brother, lover, noose of gold thread.

  I crawl into the damp, cold bed clutching my gun. Shall I hide it under a pillow? It’s been months since I’ve heard applause, months since I’ve slept.

  Look at these hideous hands. I feel old.

  It is the middle of summer; brutal. The Aztec dogs are singing. The desolate stadium bakes in the desert sun. I drift off to a fitful sleep, lulled by the intense heat and my intense nakedness. Buzz of black flies swarming above my head. Smell of rot and dreams in which I am more wanted than ever. I dive into a black sea of broken mirrors and begin to swim.

  Once upon a time, my Mother climbed down from the cross and sang me a lullaby. Once upon a time in our kitchen of Formica and linoleum, Mother baked a towering cake for my birthday. It took her all day. The kitchen became engulfed in tantalizing aromas of cardamom, butter, sweat, and burning fields of sugarcane.

  Mother said, You are the chosen one.

  Father once said, You are our pride and joy.

  Inside this vast, ancient ruin, my childhood dream house sits on a dais near The Bed of Urine-Soaked Sheets. My house re-created as an extravagant dollhouse of a thousand and one little rooms by that wicked female artist, Anonymous. Dollhouse rooms furnished with loving attention to detail, as if to taunt me. Miniature doll portraits in baroque frames hang above the miniature fireplace; three miniature Xoloitzcuintles curled up on a bed. A mother and her pups. Books, so many miniature books, line the shelves of a windowless study. A miniature samovar filled with vodka rests on a miniature sideboard, next to a miniature tray of teeny olive and goat-cheese tarts garnished with even teenier dollops of gleaming black caviar. All so rococo and insane, this ridiculous and loving attention to detail, how can I sleep?

  I was tall and strong for my age. Described as King Kong by some. Graceful as a ballerina by others. Pornographer and poet, nun and whore. My audience of believers grew by the hundreds, then the thousands. Then I lost faith.

  I spoke perfect English. Fame was my vocation. It tastes like semen. Like the gleaming metal head of a hammer. Turpentine. Gunpowder. Black pellets of shit from a man’s ass. The juice from a woman’s cunt.

  I love getting high. You remember how famous I was for getting high. I’d rather get high than drunk. There’s a difference.

  Do not overburden me with meaning, Anonymous once said. Or maybe it was me.

  The Aztec dogs run in circles and howl. The door to paradise is always open.

  Violet Smith

  I was on my way home from school, in a really bad mood. Fuck Mr. Pavino. Fuck Charlie and Kenya. Fuck Omar and Bethanne. Fuck my period. Fuck Coco Schnabel on the sidewalk with her dumb little dog, no doubt ranting to the FedEx guy about something Mayor Bloomberg did or didn’t do for the people of New York like she always does. Fuck the FedEx guy for being too nice, smiling and nodding at Coco and going uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

  The people of New York. Woo-hoo. Romeo Byron showed up in my dream last night. Très, très weird, how the people of New York really came out for me when I died. I don’t deserve it, he said. Romeo looked depressed. Really depressed, but hot. He leaned over and kissed me. Sweet, not like a perv or anything. Then he said, I love you, Violet. FYI.

  I spotted Eleanor in the lobby. Coming out of the elevator, moving real slow. Like maybe her arthritis had spread to her knees and was acting up. She had lipstick on and was looking pretty cool. Handbag, fancy red coat, funny little boots, and this wicked hat. I held the front door open for her.

  What are you listening to on that iPod of yours, Violet?

  I took my earphones out and tried not to sound annoyed. Excuse me?

  Eleanor pointed to her ear and smiled.

  Lil Wayne, I told her.

  Must be good, Eleanor said.

  I had to laugh.

  I was gonna offer to help her cross the street, but I didn’t. Like I said, I was in a really bad mood. I watched her do it, though. Watched Eleanor Delacroix cross the street and walk up the block. It took forever. Then this fucking tree got in the way and I couldn’t see her anymore.

  I never told my mother.

  1 The above is the scenario starring the vanished Agnes as Mimi imagines it. A scenario she would like to share with her brother Carmelo but doesn’t. A scenario she would like to share with Eleanor when she finally sees her. The scenario might evolve into her next movie, another gorefest about unwitting young women who find themselves in precarious situations. Maybe Mimi could call it Homeland Security. Something ironic. She wonders if Agnes might still be alive. Alive and hiding in the woods, out there somewhere in woodsy, remote, haunted New Jersey. But of course Mimi knows better.

  Also by Jessica Hagedorn

  Dogeaters

  Danger and Beauty

  Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of

  Contemporary Asian American Fiction (editor)

  The Gangster of Love

  Burning Heart: A Portrait of the Philippines

  (with Marissa Roth)

  Dream Jungle