have an erection. This is how people wind up on afternoon talk shows. Blood rush and I stand up, cross the room on stiff legs. I pick up one of the blue sneakers and turn it over in my hands. Size 9, a man’s shoe. Jude wears a woman’s 7. I lift the sneaker to my face and it smells new. I turn around as Jude returns with a silver room service tray. Thick milkshake in tall glass and stainless steel beaker. She places the tray on the coffee table and crouches there, not smiling. I watch as she lifts the milkshake to her mouth, then swabs the white cream from her dark lips.
How is it? I say.
Yummy.
I sink into one of the Beowulf chairs and let the sneaker fall from my hand.
Who is the runner?
Jude stares. Friend of mine, she says.
Does he have a name?
Jude sips the whiskey.
I tell myself not to push. I watch her throat move. She sits on the bed beside me, our hands not quite touching. The yellow mattress is a dirty lemon sky between us. Jude sinks back into that sky, her hair dark as seaweed. She balances the drink on her tummy and a lazy smile drifts across her face and disappears as if chased away by memory. I hesitate, then lie down beside her. Together we stare at the ceiling like two kids looking for reptiles in the clouds. We are surrounded by the sky.
I’m glad to see you, I say.
I’m not ready to have sex with you, she says.
Who said anything about sex?
I just want to be clear, she says.
Okay.
Okay, she says.
This is a nice room, I say.
Jude looks around. It’s obscene, she says.
How are you paying for it?
Don’t be rude, she says.
What are we doing here, then?
There is a long silence.
Jude swallows the last of the whiskey and allows her arm to fall lifeless on the bed. She closes her eyes and stops breathing for a moment and I remember a fetish of hers that I never much cared for. Once in a while, Jude liked to pretend she was dead while I fucked her, a beautiful dead girl. The glass rolls out of her hand and across the mattress. She sits up and slowly turns her doll’s head around to stare at me. Her eyes are glowing and suddenly I don’t recognize her at all. I feel my body go tense.
I found them, she says. The three of them.
Yes. I saw the photos in the bathroom.
She sits up and lights a smoke. Handsome, aren’t they?
Now there are two, I say.
Yes, she says.
What will we do with them?
Kill them, she says. Slow and careful.
The silence in the room is like copper in my mouth.
I followed the brother, I say. Today, after that scene in the alley.
Sugar Finch? she says.
Yeah, I say.
Don’t you love that name? she says, bitterly.
I love it.
Where to? she says.
A hotel called the Alamo.
What happened?
I had him. Then lost him. He’s dangerous.
That’s okay, she says. It will be nicer to kill him together.
I hope so, I say.
Jude glances at her watch and sucks in her breath.
We’re gonna be late, she says.
The fuck. Late for what?
Jude doesn’t look at me.
Where are we going?
She touches her mouth with two fingers barely trembling and I remember how she used to sink into these funky silences just before she was about to lie to me.
Shopping, she says. I need a new pair of shoes.
I stare at her, wondering if she knows how psychotic she sounds.
Jude smiles. Come on. Your baby needs a new pair of shoes.
There follows a strange hazy almost domestic moment as Jude and I gather ourselves and prepare to go out. She touches up her makeup. I give my shoes a fast polish with spit and a washcloth. I brush my teeth, washing away the taste of booze and smoke. Jude examines my face the way she used to, checking my skin for blemishes. Our faces close together, sharing the same air. I can almost taste her smoky lips. I can feel the burn of her eyes as she takes care of a blackhead for me, and all the while the words your baby ring in the air.
I have to ask, Jude.
What?
Did you have the baby?
She kisses my left eye. What do you think?
six.
DOWN TO THE SURFACE IN A HUMMING BOX and the elevator game resumes between us as if we have not been apart more than a day. Jude stands on the far side of the box, rocking slightly back and forth and cleaning her fingernails with the edge of a key. She is the only woman I know who can clean her nails and give the impression that she is stripping down an assault rifle. I slouch on the far wall and stare rudely at her. The elevator game has two rules: Jude and I are strangers and we must stand on opposite sides of the box, no matter how crowded. Otherwise we are free to stare and flirt openly, to speak or not speak.
The elevator shivers and stops on the ninth floor.
A man and woman get on, a married couple in their sixties. The man has gray hair almost blue. Black wool overcoat. The woman wears a string of pearls and her face is stretched and glossy with Botox and plastic surgery. I imagine she has a poodle at home, and a hired dogwalker. The two of them smile and nod and move to the back wall but I can’t acknowledge them because I am staring at Jude, who stands with her eyes closed and her arms crossed over her breasts. She is trembling slightly. Her eyes seem brighter, perhaps because her face has gone pale. I don’t know if this is arousal or anger or what and I think it might be terrifying if there were a blackout right now and the elevator stopped between floors.
I would not be afraid for myself, but for them. Because I have a feeling that Jude might do something well north of freaky.
What the fuck are you staring at? Jude says softly, to me.
The old woman with altered face is so visibly uncomfortable I’m afraid she might pee on herself.
Nothing, I say. I’m sorry.
The game is over when one of us apologizes. Jude comes close to me and I can smell her. Oranges and musk. I am intensely aware of her every bone and muscle, her small round breasts. Her long, volatile throat and dark eyes. The old guy to my left is making damp, fleshy noises in his throat and shifting on his feet. Jude looks at him, smiles sweetly.
This world, she says. Then the fireworks.
Dead silence.
