Oh, my. I don’t know about that, she says. But thank you.
This new Jude is packing a mean bag of tricks and now she whips out an otherworldly mixture of nubile self- consciousness and predatory voodoo. She is suddenly leaning toward the man, her lips slightly parted and I’m irritated to realize I’m getting an erection. The man looks more than a little bothered himself.
Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?
I would, says Jude. I really would. But I have a prior entanglement.
Are you sure? he says.
Yes, she says. I’m afraid so.
Oh, well. That’s too bad.
Jude licks her lips. Too bad, yes.
The man stares at her and I fancy there’s a trickle of sweat along his jaw. But he’s a tough cookie, I think. He reaches into his breast pocket and produces a business card. On the ring finger of his right hand he wears a heavy fraternity ring with a dark red stone. I hear myself exhale. Jude takes the card from him as if it’s a long-stemmed rose.
You should call me, the man says. I have a friend or two in Hollywood.
Lucky you, says Jude.
Are you a spiritual person? he says.
No, she says. Not anymore.
He smiles. I’m a Buddhist, myself.
Jude nods, considering. You must have a great capacity for suffering, she says.
You have no idea, he says.
Tempting, she says. Maybe I will call you, after all.
Yes, the man says. He stands there, rocking back on his heels as if he needs more oxygen.
Goodbye, says Jude.
The man stares at her, mute. Then turns to go. Jude glances down at the card he gave her.
Wait, she says.
The man keeps walking, his back to her.
This is just a phone number, she says. Who shall I ask for?
He grins at this. My name is John Miller, he says. Then steps onto the escalator and disappears.
Jude doesn’t look at me, not yet.
The salesman sits patiently in one of the leather chairs, his head bowed. She touches his sleeve. I love these shoes, she says. Will you box up my boots, please?
The salesman nods, his face turning pink. Then he scurries away. I walk toward Jude, my head buzzing. The locusts in my head are getting ready to descend, and my brain is a field of wheat. Jude is glowing like she just swallowed a fistful of stardust. She stands with hands on her hips, pelvis thrust out.
Did you not recognize him? she says.
I stare into the mirror and see the photos in her bathroom again. I see a sideways flash of dark hair, of blue and black eyes. John Ransom Miller was one of the masked men who’d come to see us in New Orleans. He was the panty sniffer, the one I’d hammered to the floor with the toilet lid. He had lain crumpled on his side the entire time, watching as the others raped her. He barely looked at me, that day.
Yeah. I recognized him.
Well? she says.
This is why you gave me the gun? I say. You want me to kill him.
Jude shrugs. Perhaps you should rethink your ideas about fate.
The gun is heavy in my pocket.
Yeah, I say. Perhaps I should.
Don’t kill him, she says. Not yet.
Why?
Because we need him to get to the quarterback.
Senator Cody, I say.
Yeah. She points at the mirror. If not for him, I’m not looking at this face.
What then? You want me to make friends with this guy?
If you want to hurt him, she says, bring me his finger. The one with that hideous ring.
I stare at her.
Go, she says. You’re going to lose him.
I take the escalator down to menswear. Jude stands at the top of the escalator, hands on her hips and a crooked little smile on her face. I’m going to hell, of course. I turn around to face the descent and when I look back she’s gone. The escalator nears the bottom and I wait for my feet to touch solid ground. Five seconds, four. Time enough to contemplate my situation. Jude wants me to follow this man, but I am not to kill him. Thank god for that. I had an opportunity to kill Sugar Finch earlier today, and fucked it up like a rock star. I tell myself that if I love her, I will not fail her again.
Five years have passed since Jude and I were together. The years just slip away. I take off my shoes and pause to examine my toes and two days disappear. I wander into the bathroom to brush my teeth and a week is gone. I pour myself a cup of coffee and a month floats past. The years tumble past you like bits of paper on the street and you may not even feel the breeze at your back but then something catches your eye, a twist of black hair or a dog leaping to catch a tennis ball. The splintered chorus of a stupid pop song. You turn around and another chunk of your life drifts by like unrecognized trash and it was never yours to begin with.
But look at it this way. Jude and I had a fight once, way back when. The apartment was expanding, warping. The rooms were gelatinous and everything was curved. Our bedroom was taking the shape of an egg. The room was freaking me out and drugs were involved. They usually are. This is a natural law, like the one about gravity. If a body has physical mass, then it will fall to earth. If your hotel room is transforming into a metaphysical bubble, then drugs are probably involved.
Anyway.
Jude was completely nonverbal and I was crouched high atop an armoire, stuck there. I was suddenly terrified of heights. And of her, probably. I watched Jude crawl around on the floor with a knife in one hand, a long bright red dildo in the other. Jude was trying to speak. She was grunting, snorting. I was pretty sure she wanted to kill me, she wanted to fuck me to death. Her shoulders were slick with blood and snot and black grime and her brain was so shredded by coke she would not have blinked if I had spontaneously burst into flames. But that’s just another drug story, a psycho love story. The real Jude lay curled up like a cat beside me less than twenty-four hours later asking me what color she should paint her toenails. She wanted to drink cheap white wine and eat chocolate for breakfast. She wanted me to stay in bed all day and watch MTV with her. Jude put her head in my lap and asked me in a destroyed voice if I still liked her. Jude is composed of claws and teeth and unblinking eyes but she is vulnerable, perhaps now more than ever. She is a wolf but like anybody else she’s afraid to grow old, she’s afraid that one day she will walk into a room and no one will look at her.
I touched her hair and whispered yes, I like you.
There is an obscure musical instrument called the theremin that produces sound without ever being touched. The player moves his hands in a slow circular motion between twin antennae thin as ghosts, calling forth eerie underwater noises akin to whalespeak. Brian Wilson was particularly fond of the theremin. He used it sparingly on the Pet Sounds album, I believe. Anyway, Jude and I have always managed to extract sound from each other, without ever touching the skin. And I think that’s love, or something like it.
John Ransom Miller is nowhere to be seen and I hear Jude’s voice in my head.
Do you believe in fate, she says. Or not?
I want to go back to that hotel room and I might need to bring her a strange man’s severed finger to gain entry. It sounds like a bad joke but now I’m anxious that I’ve lost him. I have lost the owner of the finger and I hurry through a demilitarized zone of postmodern Italian shoes. Gucci and friends. A green and black spaceman’s boot catches my eye and I pick it up by the laces and let it dangle. Prada. Nine hundred dollars and I laugh out loud, nervous. I don’t want to hunt this man and I don’t want to lose him, either. I want to go back to the obscene hotel room. I want to get good and drunk. I twirl the boot and stare at it until mesmerized. I feel like a monkey confronted by the miracle of a yo-yo. A salesman glares at me and I put the boot down as Miller walks right past
