near the viaduct, in addition to bouncing at The Lion’s Lair.
Living there was the best time of my life. Waking up to those beautiful and hypnotic blue mountains to the west, always covered with snow, even in July. Until we went to Vegas on a whim and I saw what the city and the real world had done to Celandine Tomei.
Our curiosity had gotten the better of us. We had gambled; breaking even, more or less. Neither one of us drank much. Alcohol has adverse effects on my health and I get massive headaches. So our decision was a sober one. A man dressed in lilac, a bargain basement Prince impersonator of the wrong race, told us where to find this … zombie tongue.
I was feeling natty; dressed in non-touristy black with an olive green jacket. Thin lapels, flowered tie, but mellowed out with a button of Elvis Presley playing the ukulele in
The directions were not that difficult. Maryland Parkway connected with Rue H Street past Eleventh. In the middle of the three-way intersection, cross-hatched in shadows, there was a white building, railroad flat-styled. The logo was a woman in teal wearing a low-brimmed hat.
The name of the place, also in teal script, was BELLADONNA.
The building vibrated with the passing of trucks on the parkway overhead. Overhead gels of red and blue, beaded doorways. Flashing squares of soft light on the floor, alternating in chequerboard patterns. Maybe a discotheque in a different time. The decor reminded me of the Go-Go bars in Calumet City, back in Illinois.
The woman on stage was a burn victim; in the light and nicotine haze you couldn’t tell unless you were looking up at her. She was devoting most of her time to a gaggle of skeletons at the other end of the bar.
Where we were sitting, a dwarfish woman with hair growing out of a mole in her cheek passed by with an empty potato chip can. Money for the jukebox. The current song was some oldie but goodie from the seventies. “Fool For The City” by Foghat, maybe. Or “Toys In The Attic.” Aerosmith always drew their biggest crowds at strip bars. The mole was the size of a.38’s exit-wound. The woman blew away the long strands of hair from her mouth before trying to seduce us with a bloated, grey tongue.
It made me think about Celandine. And of myself. Time changes nothing but the contours of our bodies. (The burn victim on stage had no contours at all — we saw that when she moved our way; she was eternally young. A survivor of Vietnam, in fact. Her crotch smooth, like a Barbie doll.)
The hours passed and the drinks took their toll.
I had thought that the term “zombie tongue” was some street phrase for whores, like meth-moxie was anywhere else for drugs. But I couldn’t leave. In the middle of a Windows of Whitechapel song — the burn victim grinding her smooth, gashless pelvis against the far wall — I tried loping over to the john. Green shag carpeting covered the walls and ceiling of the rooms down the hall. I was reminded of Elvis’s Jungle Room at Graceland, the plushness acting as sound-proofing. I saw the sign marked ME off to the right.
Near the opposite door, painted black, a tall guy with a shirt that read I LOVE YUMA, ARIZONA came out of the room, nodding his head in a “your turn” gesture. I noticed blood on his lip, purple in the thin track of lighting imbedded in the overhead carpeting. I was ready to go into the bathroom when my eye caught a glimpse of something beyond the still open black door.
A bookcase, and in the wedge of light, the unmistakable — to me, at least — yellow and red binding of a
She was naked and tied down spread-eagled on the bed. Her body was thinner than I might have expected. But I knew it was her, you see, because of the head. Celly’s bush had grown up in a thin straight line, like a fuzzy black worm. Her nipples were small and pink. Sure enough, with age, the fingers that had protruded from her stomach had decalcified back into her. Where the small leg had been was a pale nub above the pelvic bone. Maybe it had been sanded smooth.
Celandine looked drugged or weary from crying. I could not look at her. But I found the courage to walk into the room. I looked around the sparse rectangle of living area. Hell, it was a mansion compared to the Cal City titty bars where you fucked the women on the stairwell landings, against the walls like it was Victorian England. If you fucked them in the ass, they spent the few moments reading the new graffiti.
Tubes of salve and Ben-Gay were crafted into strange stick-figures. Pill containers littered the vanity unit like perfume bottles. Tricyclic, anti-depressants like Elavil, stronger shit like Denzatropline. All labeled with a post office box in Groom Lake, Nevada. The doctor’s name was unpronounceable. Blank postcards, her own mementoes. Deer feeding near Backbone State Park, Iowa. Thornton’s Truckstop Diner (Con Mucho Gusto!) Beaumont, Texas. The Big Chief Hotel in Gila Bend, Arizona. The sun setting over Roswell, New Mexico.
Other, more “grown-up” books: Nelson Algren’s
I heard a moan.
It was the head. Mouth open, like a dog begging for a biscuit. The tip of the tongue was bitten off. It
I ran out the door and into the john, vomit already nearing my teeth. Sweating, numb. And there he was in the doorless stall nearest the entrance, my new friend. The man who had been in Celandine’s room before me.
The man with blood on his lip. He smiles then, said how the head felt no pain. He
Do the crime without doing the time.
When he smiled a bloody thin-lipped grin and compared it to having your cake and eating it too, hiking up his belt like a
I walked past the condom machines to the mirror. Took my Ray-Bans off and stared at my bulging face. Beat holy hell out of the mirror, out of my reflection.
But had the common sense to wash my hands and calm down.
Went back to the stage with my hands in my jacket pockets, told Norm I wanted to head back to the Plaza.
The girl dancing on stage as we walked out the door had two mastectomy scars.
