In Extremis Read online

  But it wasn’t these he was drawn to. It was just one girl.

  He was long past resisting; the thing was on them like a hurricaneforce Santa Ana wind, parching out all restraint, leaving only the unstoppable drive to merge and to bang, one on the other, like two people on the opposite sides of a door, each banging on it at the same time, loud as they could, each demanding that the other open it—

  That’s how they fucked.

  He had seen the girl, no more than twenty years old, earlier that morning, in the cafeteria. He’d stopped in, on the way to see Kander, for a bagel and coffee. Her hair in raven ringlets falling with springy lushness over bared shoulders; tight jeans; sandals that showed small feet, scarlet nails; when she’d turned, feeling his hot gaze, her face amazingly open, full of maybes, possibilities in her full lips and AmerAsian eyes. Golden skin. Part Japanese, part black, part Caucasian, and something else—Indian? Her cheekbones were high. They led to her eyes and down to her lips.

  Her smile had been impossibly open. Not an invitation, just . . . open.

  But, panicky with his rapture, he had said nothing; and she had turned away, and picked out a chocolate pudding.

  Now . . . the center of the quad, under the sky . . .

  The very center of the campus quadrangle. Brick, it was, with pebble paths from the four corners meeting at a concrete star in the middle. But the bricks and pebbles and concrete had all gone soft, and were alive: he could feel them returning his touch as he and the girl rolled on them, as he banged himself into her . . .

  Some part of him struggled for objectivity, struggled for freedom from the overwhelming energies boiling around him . . . Boiling around the hundreds and hundreds of copulating couples and threesomes and foursomes across the campus square . . .

  He had been running from the lab, he’d seen her, and she had shouted something joyfully to him as she ran up to him, tearing off her top, and he hadn’t been able to make it out because of the thudding, the inarticulate music coming from everywhere and nowhere, sounding like five radio stations turned on full blast over loudspeakers, five different rock-songs all played at once, a chaos of conflicting sounds merging into a mass of exuberant noise—except for no clear reason all the songs had the same percussion, the same beat . . . THUD THUD THUD THUD . . . maybe just his pulse . . . THUD THUD THUD THUD . . . White noise, red noise and black . . .

  And he hadn’t been able to hear her over this but she’d grabbed his hands and pressed them to her breasts—

  Her breasts were songs of Solomon, were each like a dove, fitting perfectly under his hands, each one upturned and nuzzling his palm with a stiff nipple.

  Run, he told himself. Get away from here.

  Her belly was soft but muscular, moving in a belly dance she’d never learned in life, and he was peeling off her jeans . . . and their clothes, they found, fell away from them like wet ashes, in the magic that was rampant about them, and you could scrape the fabric away with your nails. In moments they were nude and rolling on the impossibly soft bricks, with the white noise, the red noise, the black noise; rolled by the golden waves of god-sized sound and he had only a few glimpses of the others, copulating ludicrously to all sides and with frenetic energy. The obese, unpleasantly naked sixty-year-old Dean of Mathematical Studies was slamming it to the rippling-buff thirty year old lesbian volleyball coach, and the fifty-five-year-old lady with the mustache who was in charge of the cafeteria had stripped away most of her white uniform and was straddling the quarterback of the football team and he was digging at her flapping breasts till they bled and he was mouthing I love you baby at her; and the Gay Men’s Glee Club was copulating not only with one another but with the girls from the Young Republican Women’s Sorority Association, and the black campus mailman was fucking wildly with the blond woman who taught jazz dancing—but it wasn’t the first time; and biology classes were copulating with physics classes . . .

  And they fucked faster, he and the golden skinned raven haired girl, her eyes flashing like onyx under a laser, and he could feel her cervix pressing against the end of his dick as he ground into her, feel the dimple in the middle of her cervix that led to her uterus, could feel the spongy tissue of the inner vagina with almost unbearable detail as she chewed at his tongue, only making it bleed a little, as close by the president of the Students for Christ screamed, “FUCK ME PLEASE UNTIL IT KILLS ME!” to the wrestling coach until the doddering head of the philosophy department shoved his improbably engorged dick so deep into the student’s throat he gagged and choked, the old man, his wattles shimmering with his humping, singing “I got my cock in my pocket and it’s shovin’ out through my pants, just wanna fuck, don’t want no romance!” Or was he singing that? Was that in Berryman’s mind? Some part of Berryman was becoming increasingly detached as he fucked harder, driving bleedingly hard into the gorgeous Asian student; something in him trying to crawl out from under this slavery . . . The old man jamming himself into the student’s throat clawed at the air and fell over the other two in the threesome, shaking in death . . . Others, mostly the older ones, were beginning to die but even those not breaking under the strain were showing haunted eyes, amping desperation, and the Dean of Comparative Religion grabbed a gun from the fallen holster of a cop and blew out his own brains and the man next to him took the gun from the Dean’s limp hand and shot himself in the throat and the woman beside him took up the gun . . .

  While overhead the black thunderclouds still shed their lightnings, sent eager arcs into the receptive cunt of the Earth itself . . .

  For a while now Berryman had been coming, ejaculating in the girl but the coming wouldn’t stop, went achingly on and on and on, he was quite empty but still his urethra convulsed as it tried to pump something into her, and all that came up now was blood in place of cum, and he screamed with the pain and she tried to push away from him with her hands but her legs, locked behind his back, disobeyed her, pulled him closer to her yet—

  Berryman made a supreme internal effort—arising from an experience of self-observation, of mindfulness, of an experience of the possibility of freedom in detached consciousness, something he’d learned from an old man in the Andes . . .

  And never before had he really succeeded in it; never before had it quite crystallized in him. But now under these unspeakable pressures it came together and he was whole, and he was free—

  His body was still caught, but some essence . . .

  An essence! Another essence . . .

  Some essence was hovering over the humping, screaming figures, and calling out . . . Calling out like to like. To another essence, its own kind.

  Then the other essence came; the other end of the spectrum, closing the circuit, closing the gap: the blue light, and the silence . . .

  How Screwtape hated silence . . .

  The silence came rolling across them in a wave of release, of icy purity, of relaxing, of forgiving, and they fell away from one another, those who’d survived, and lay gasping, falling into a deep state of rest, and the lightnings stopped, the squirming smoke dissipated in the sudden drenching downpour of rain. The bricks became hard and his dick became soft and . . .

  And the cat, Muffy, ran past him, carrying one of Kander’s eyes in its jaws.

  ANSWERING MACHINE

  Transcription begins:

  Darla? Um . . . Darla?

  Yeah, Hello. Darla?

  It’s Georgine.

  Yeah look I couldn’t talk about this with you, like, in person?

  I hope it’s okay I just wanna like, leave a message on your machine?

  Listen, it wasn’t my decision, it wasn’t my choice to kill your sister, it was Tush, it was her thing, she goes, “Stop being a baby.”

  And she tells me I bitch about people saying I’m a bitch and people just assume and here I’m acting like a wimp, whining because she was going to put her in that thing and . . . . She was running that whole fucked up trip on me, Darla.

  And she goes, Tush goes, “Darla’s lit
tle Tandy wantsa get into mutilating herself, let’s go all the way . . . I mean, you know she wants to die . . . she’s like, tried to commit suicide five times . . .”

  I told her, I go, “If she wanted to commit suicide really she’d be dead by now. It’s like it was never serious?”

  But she didn’t listen. She has that . . . she has that dominance thing . . . and it’s like . . . she told me what her counselor, that she’s trying to get out from under something by getting people in shit as deep as she can . . .

  You know?

  So I said, “Don’t put her in there, don’t put her in that . . .”

  I mean, it was at the junkyard after midnight where we go to smoke bongs and sometimes we get some black tar and . . . you know? You better erase this after you hear it . . .

  So I said “Tush, that’s—I’m not signing that check, bitch, putting somebody in one of those car compactor things . . . I mean if she wants to commit suicide she wants it to be painless—”

  But Tush goes, “She’s totally fuckin’ numbed out from the pills I gave her anyway, it’s like heavy Tuinal and codeine, she won’t feel shit, I just wanna see how it looks afterwards . . .”

  Her Dad, Tush’s dad, he’s just the same he’s got that same . . . that same thing . . .

  He’s, like, an LAPD cop and he used to handcuff Tush when she was acting out and stuff . . .

  Anyway they were saying—I swear to God—they were saying that they were going to put me in there too, in that machine, if I didn’t shut up and then Tush said she heard the spirits of the people killed in the car accidents from all the smashed junkyard cars around us . . . you know how she goes there and gets stoned and says she talks to the ghosts of people that died in those cars . . . and the spirits were asking her to put Tandy in the car compactor and I couldn’t even cruise with that, serious, and I’m from Venice Beach ,I mean we’ve seen it all . . . we used to set bums on fire but . . . you don’t know the bums, right?

  And I don’t even believe the ghosts told her to do that. She just wanted to do that. I mean, I know she talks to the ghosts in the totaled cars but like, they never asked for anything like that before.

  I mean, the ghosts—before that night—the ghosts were always saying shit like, “Would you pray for me? Would you take the battery out of the car and drop it off the pier because I think that my spirit is stuck here because of the battery, my blood got on the battery and the electricity is trapping me here . . .”

  And like who would listen to those spirits in their right mind, because last time . . . last year they told us to do that paint thinner and make those marks on the ground and then Duggy-pup, that red-haired guy that used to—? You remember Duggy. I don’t think you were there that night. We made the marks and then he starts foaming at the mouth and shaking and he starts clawing his face and saying, “I don’t deserve this face, but only bone, but only bone . . .” Like, over and over, it was sickening, “but only bone, but only bone . . .” So we had to come up with some explanation at the ER for him and his Mom sent him to military school but he kept talking to himself and then he hung himself in the boy’s bathroom of the school but anyway—

  About Tush and your sister.

  And the compactor.

  Um . . . .I said ...

  So I said, “No way are the spirits asking to put her in that car compactor and I’m not going to stay here, so . . .”

  So I just—

  I just left, I left right outta there, serious—and she woke up in the thing I guess—your sister woke up in the car compactor, woke up from being zonked—

  Well I’m sure, who wouldn’t wake up when that machine starts compacting your ass. One time I was zonked out at a party and this guy started putting ice in my butt-hole and I can tell you I fucking woke up from that, so . . .

  I’m sorry. I’m so freaked out. I can’t think.

  Anyway I guess she woke up because . . .

  Because I heard her scream from like a block away?

  I swear to god; I was a block away.

  Tush just has that thing . . . that . . .

  I went home and took a sleeping pill and went to sleep and I had this dream . . .

  I dreamt . . .

  I had a dream about dead people in car wrecks trying to tell me to call you so . . . oh wait if this is being recorded it could be used for evidence . . . Erase this shit . . .

  I was—

  I was just making all this up . . . except . . . Tush has that . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your sister. I mean—I just heard about it. I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I can’t think.

  But . . . don’t keep this tape okay?

  Erase this okay, after you listen to this . . . okay?

  Darla?

  Are you there listening?

  Darla?

  Darla?

  I gotta—I can’t . . .

  I can’t think.

  I’m gonna hang up.

  I’m just . . . I’m sorry . . .

  I was a block away . . .

  Darla?

  I’m gonna hang up.

  Oh no—Tush is here, she’s coming in, Darla she’s—

  YOU’RE TALKING TO DARLA? YOU FUCKING MORON.

  It’s just the answering machine. Her answering machine—

  NOW WE HAVE TO GO OVER THERE. WE HAVE TO GET THAT TAPE. AND HER.

  Darla? She—

  End Transcription. Suspects were arrested at scrapyard 1:00 am after patrolman D. Roeser heard the screams from the car compactor. Both bodies were found mingled with compacted car parts. Identification is ongoing. Tape confiscated from suspects.

  —Arresting officer: E.Bloom, Northridge PD

  PAPER ANGELS ON FIRE

  “Mr. Cordell, I know how you must feel.” Bret Sage gazed sympathetically into Cordell’s eyes as he said it. “Yes, you’ve lost Muriel—for a while. But you’ll see your daughter again. I promise you.” Sage realized he had his hands in his jacket pockets. It was chilly on the front porch but hands in pockets didn’t look right, at a time like this. He took his hands out and clasped them in front of him. He’d seen funeral directors use that pose. “What happened was part of Muriel’s journey. Death is just a freeway interchange, Mr. Cordell.”

  Cordell smiled coldly, and nodded to himself. “Yeah, it’s almost funny to watch—the way your mouth moves and those words come out, like puffs of smoke.” Cordell was a balding middle-aged man in a black sweater flecked with what looked like dog hair; the sweater’s sleeves were drawn back showing beefy forearms. Sage could see the big dog waiting in Cordell’s SUV—a German Shepherd. Cordell was wearing opaque dark glasses hiding his eyes, and maybe his intentions. “Just means nothing at all,” Cordell went on. “You are one empty son of a bitch, Sage.” And Sage saw that Cordell’s right hand was hidden behind his back.

  Sage licked his lips, took a step back, edging towards his front door. Maybe he’d been hasty, coming out on the porch alone. It was starting to sound like this wasn’t about a settlement . . .

  Little Bear was out back somewhere, fixing the hot tub. The sunset bite was in the northern New Mexico air. The shadowy pine woods around the house rang and chattered with birdsong. The ranch house was isolated—no neighbors around to call out to, if he needed them.

  Something moved clickingly through the patch of prickly pear under the front window. Funny how vivid everything seemed, in this instant.

  Cordell took a step toward him, and the birdsong, all at once, suddenly quieted.

  “My daughter trusted you,” Cordell said, between clenched teeth. “And that is just goddamn amazing to me. Just look at you! Shabby middle aged long haired unlicensed therapist in beaded moccasins. A slick line of bullshit. Lots of worn out clichés. And your slogan. ‘Give me your trust and I’ll give you life’!” Cordell shook his head sadly. “She was always a bit lost, that girl. We tried hard, real goddamn hard, to help her—and she was getting on track! And then you got hold of her.”

 
That’s when Sage noticed the tattoo on Cordell’s left forearm. Faded blue ink, but you could make out an anchor slanted through the Earth, topped by an eagle and Semper Fi.

  Sage swallowed. “Mr. Cordell—we’ve had hundreds of people in that sweat lodge with no problem and she probably had some . . . some pre-existing condition . . . a bad heart valve or . . .”

  “No. She didn’t. You gave her drugs. You wouldn’t give her water. You wouldn’t let her leave. She died in that hole in the ground you call a sweat lodge. And those others too.”

  “We never, uh . . .” They had, actually, given the Experiencers a rather large dose of Ecstasy. People expected a powerful experience for their three thousand dollars seminar fee and that was the only way to guarantee it. He told them the pills were made of Sacred Herbs. They were supposed to take the pills after the sweat lodge ordeal. But the timing got mixed up, maybe because Sage himself had been stoned that morning. “She may have taken something on her own . . .”

  “Uh huh. That’s what your lawyer says. Says you didn’t give her the stuff. But you did, Sage. Ecstasy. Now, that wouldn’t have killed her—but that stuff makes a body overheat . . . and then you put her in a sweat lodge! Wouldn’t let her leave. She begged to be let out . . .”

  “We’ve been in touch with her—we’ve channeled her, since then, and I know it’s hard to believe but . . . she’s actually, um, happy where she is.”

  “Sage, you’re gonna choke on your own lies. Starting with your name. What’s your real last name, again—Mazoosky?”

  “Um—” It was Mezinsky. Didn’t have the right ring to it. He’d stopped thinking of himself as Mezinsky long ago. “I am—Sage.”

  “You’re a hustler who doesn’t care who he hurts, is who you are. A hit and run charlatan, doesn’t care who he runs down. But your pals in the local DA’s office, looks like they’re gonna let you get away with it! No prosecution! Sure I could win a lawsuit. But that doesn’t make it, ‘Sage’. That’s not restitution for my daughter. Not in my book.”

  Sage licked his lips. Mouth seemed so dry. “I can see this attempt to communicate was a mistake. I understand your feelings in this time of bereavement. But you’d better talk to my lawyer. Good day to you and may the Spirits bless you, Mr. Cordell.”