In Extremis Read online

  The bodies under him in that moment were rearranged by the dynamics of suffering, and parted legs and tilted torsos shifted at angles to create a kind of wriggling shaft, a space letting more light through. Blood and piss and murky scum and seawater trickled down this shaft in no hurry, like a spring oozing from a muddy hillside; a living crevice . . .

  . . . a living crevice . . .

  . . . maybe fifty feet deep and at the bottom of it he saw parts of the Security Guards. The lady, perhaps alive, seeming to wriggle with life, but maybe she was just shaken by the twitchings around her; the man was split open, you could see the yellow fat through the ruptured belly, a perverse layer cake of exposed fat and intestinal tissue garnished by a splintered rib. Somehow the flashlight had been turned on, maybe by one of the hands groping from the layers of people. The flashlight’s butt had slipped into the fat man’s gouged open belly which quivered with the movement of struggling bodies, shimmying the light up the shaft of bodies (was that a rainbow in the little waterfall of piss and sea water?); the light playing over faces, some of them alive and staring with a disbelief almost identical to the staring dead (but for the randomly tracking eyes) and some profoundly identified with hurt and some trying to claw their way out and too stupid for despair.

  There was a man whose interior had been pressed out through his mouth and he was choking on his own throat. He died as Gino watched.

  About two layers of people down from the top, a hand thrust out into the crevice; there was a tattoo of a flying pig on the streaming wrist of that hand. It was Telly’s hand.

  Gino reached down and tugged and thought the arm was going to come free, torn away, but after a short, wet slide it resisted, and he knew it was still attached by a ribbon of flesh. He knew with a spiraling assurance that Telly was dead.

  Dude, I’m gonna sing in a rock band, my cousin he’s got this anti-racist skinhead industrial band going and his singer’s leaving and he says if I shave my head I could join and I said what the fuck, it grows back. I don’t know, though, I might be able to get on this TV show instead, there’s this show called LIFE STRAIGHT UP that’s gonna be on this new channel that’s gonna compete with MTV and they follow you around and film whatever you do except you got to live with these people they pick and they wanted a bike messenger but maybe, you know, I could be in both things, the band and the—

  Telly’s ambitions. Gino’s ambitions.

  Yeah, Jane, you’re right, you can’t teach fulltime and write novels too, not great ones, but you can do one and then the other. It starts with the day gig, you know? I thought maybe if I got a professorship . . . but, I don’t know, that’s like years in grad, and it sucks up a lot of creative energy, all those papers, but, shit, carpe diem, I gotta go for it now, I blew the last scholarship but I think I can get another and maybe I could do both . . . and . . .

  . . . and I’m gonna get a website . . .

  I tell you that? That I’m gonna get a—

  One of the red lights fizzled and went out. Someone was shouting, “Okay, folks, those . . . uh, those of us who are . . . who can move okay, we uh, listen we got to . . . we got to . . . to organize, we got to move toward the door, a few of us and . . . and try to get down the tunnel, there might be a way through . . .”

  An aftershock shimmied through them. Metal like rubber. Another window not far below and to the right burst in the aftershock and Gino could see it in the light from the remaining red emergency light. The lady in lavender with big hair was being pressed by the weight of bodies above her, forced through the ragged gap in the glass like playdough shaped by one of those kids’ molds that forced it through a little patterned hole and he could see her living flesh pressed into the outline of the hole in the glass. The woman’s scream was one note, one very high and incredulous EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

  “What we gotta do is not panic—“

  Someone laughed. Gino was vaguely aware, and almost surprised, that someone was fucking on the top of the pile, just a few feet away.

  “—there’s always a chance and there could be a way through, it might . . . uh . . . .it might not be as bad as it seems . . .”

  More laughter. Male, Gino thought.

  “I . . . I can’t get this door open and if, please, if we could . . . if we could push some of the . . . those who didn’t make it, if we could push them . . . push them out a window . . . we . . . please, hurry because, um, I’m . . . there’s blood and water and it’s coming up to my . . . I’m wedged down here and there are too many people on me to move, so if someone could just move to the . . . the sound of my . . . hello? If someone could . . . uh, the water is . . . buh wabuhess . . . wabuh us—hey! I . . . wabugh ess . . .”

  More laughter.

  . . . EEEEEEEE. Then that scream stopped, and the red light by the window went out too. Someone else screamed that they were drowning, please help them.

  Gino could feel the coldness in his head spreading. There wasn’t much time left. The heart of all life was underneath, beating in the crevice, the living crevice. Very deliberately, Gino plunged into the crevice, headfirst.

  He liked the way it felt, as he went down. Like it was a throat and his body was a dick. He thought: That’s really how it feels.

  Then he hit the bottom of the shaft, and was plunged under the surface of the mingled liquids there, salty and shitty, and he squirmed around, holding his breath, till he got his legs under him, and stood up on someone’s dead face and on someone else’s—what? an arm ?—and felt another, vertical crevice in the jigsaw of bodies open in front of him, warm and wet and suffering, and it was just what he was probing for, so he pulled off his clothes, all of them, and then he forced himself into the crevice in the canyon of bodies, headfirst, and squirmed immediately forward, and thought it serendipitous how the blood and the other liquids had become lubricants here, and how remarkably easy to move it was, so long as he stayed more or less horizontal, and how there were pockets of air to breathe, as he was still above most of the sea water, and how marvelously indifferent he felt when someone in psychotic agony sank their teeth in his shoulder and sawed at it, how it felt rather good, in fact, and merely felt cold when he tore himself away from it, losing a chunk of shoulder, and forced himself into a steaming gap which he realized was the gut of a human being, he was actually worming through the center of a living person, the wound flesh tight as sex around him, but they didn’t seem to feel it: he could feel the crooked end of their halved spine scraping along his own backbone.

  Sometimes he heard voices, whispers, mutters, weeping, rising and falling as a whole as if by some consensual signal; other times it was echoingly silent. Or maybe it was just his hearing shutting off at intervals. He could taste nothing, smell little, and he was grateful for that, but his skin was exquisitely alive, and he realized he had a hard-on and he dragged his hard dick, furrowing it along the bodies, the wet fabric and flesh, and humped now and then, and squirmed onward, remembering maggots he’d seen in a sealed jelly jar that had so outraged his father, nineteen years earlier, Gino nosing wormlike through darkness, then realizing that he had found his way to two full, bloody-wet breasts of a woman below him.

  He was oozing himself over her from her head toward her feet, and she was alive and put her arms around him, and tried to force his face into her crotch, but then he’d found another woman, this one turned the other way, and he felt her hand on his cock guiding it into her, as the weight of bodies around them increased with another aftershock, a shift of the subway car, and pressed down on them so they could scarcely breathe, and somehow he knew, he understood with what might have been the telepathy of human minds under incredible pressurization, that this dying woman wanted to copulate with him because it was the most life-confirming thing she could do, at that moment, with her body, she couldn’t get out and this was all that was left, this praying with the body, one person into another, saying I am here, I was here, I am alive, this is alive, you acknowledge me more deeply than in the puniness of ta
lk and hand-holding and kissing, you acknowledge in me the reproductive impulse that connects to life, you fuck your way toward that recognition, you come into me, you come into me, I’m here, I’m alive, I was alive, I was, I am, I was, I am . . . was . . . was . . . The pressure increasing, no more breathing, no more air, oxygen starvation forcing their minds from their bodies, entwining to rise together, wet, locked together, in life, in death . . . he ejaculated into the eager void of death.

  JUST LIKE SUZIE

  Perrick is in his underwear, standing in the middle of the room, silently trying to talk himself out of slamming crank. He’s a paunchy guy, early forties who looks ten years older than he has to, and knows it. He’s in a weekly rates hotel room in San Francisco. It’s not boosh-wah but it’s not a piss-in-the-sink room, as it has a small bathroom. Perrick lives here, for the moment. He’s used to these rooms, because he’s lived half of his double life in them, but he’s not used to sleeping in them; not used to the shouts in the hall at night, the heavy tread of cops, the shrieking fights of the two junkie gays downstairs. But this Bedlam is genteel, one of his neighbors assures him, compared to other weeklies on the street.

  The room contains, besides Perrick, a double bed, a dresser on which is aftershave, cologne, a box of tissues, a man’s comb, a cheap chrome-faced radio. There’s a lamp table by the bed, with a squat lamp on it, a wastepaper basket below it. A window onto the street. A raincoat hanging on a hook.

  Perrick is alternately pacing and going over to a table on which is a syringe, already filled and capped up, and a spoon. He nervously pokes at the syringe, holds it up to the light, puts it down, whines a little to himself. Of two minds about using it. He picks it up again, puts it down and goes to the bathroom door. He calls through the door, “SUZIE! Damn, come on, girl!”

  Suzie’s hoarse voice from the bathroom: “Just take a fuckin’ chill pill, man, you gotta get your stuff in you so you be a little fuckin’ understandin’ about me gettin’ mine!”

  “Heroin,” Perrick mutters to himself. “Sick bitch. She’s gonna give me AIDS or something.” He yells at the door again. “Come on baby let’s do it!”

  Suzie emerges from the bathroom—she’s skinny, with bad skin, thin bleached blond hair, a white girl who’s affected a lot of the local homegirl mannerisms, mixes them all up with her white Valleytrash Southern Cal roots. “Your princess is here, dude!” She walks a little unsteadily on her heels, already she’s nodding a touch standing up. “You got my money?”

  “I paid you when you came in!”

  “That was like a down payment thing.” She sinks onto the edge of the bed and fumbles a cigarette out from her purse, which is still on her shoulder strap . . . Her movements become slow and deliberate as she lights it.

  Perrick yells, “The fuck it was! I can’t believe you pullin’ this shit after rippin’ me off last time—my fuckin’ credit cards—I can’t believe I’d go for you again but . . .”

  “Okay fuck this, I’m goin’, I don’t need no accusations, you totally illin’, you dissin’ me, fuck you.” She starts to get up, sways, falls into sitting back on the bed. “Shit.”

  “Okay. Okay fuck it. Here.” He slaps more money down beside her, it’s gone into her purse almost before it hits the mattress . . . Then she droops a little, nodding . . . comes out of it, shaking herself.

  “Wow. Shit’s good. Let’s do this thing. Before I nod out or something. You want it like before?”

  Perrick nods, unzips his pants, then hesitates, takes his wallet out of his back pocket and puts it where he can keep an eye on it, in the middle of the dresser. He goes to the raincoat, puts it on over his underwear. Buttons it up. He goes to her, taking up the syringe. Perrick makes as if he doesn’t notice her. He’s looking at the ceiling and humming absently but breathing rather rapidly.

  Suzie, in a practiced little girl’s voice: “Oh! I wonder what would happen if I looked inside this big grown-up man’s coat when he’s not watching me! My goodness! I wonder what’s in here!”

  She unbuttons the bottom button of his coat and puts her head under it. Feels around. “Oh what’s this nummy-yummy! Mmmmm! I wonder what the big man will do . . . !”

  Perrick gasps as she begins giving him head, her own head bobbing. Perrick snatches up the syringe, drags back his coat sleeve and fixes, registers immediately. His back arches and his jaw quivers as he rushes. Never as good as the rush he had the first time he did it and every time he does it he feels a little more strain on his heart and he half hopes that this time the ticker goes blooey but still he’s riding what rush there is, enough to make him go: “Oh Jeezus! Oh yes little girl, you bad dirty little girl. Oh yes, take it! Take it! Oh yes, you ripped me off you dirty little girl—my credit cards—but I forgive you because you are the little girl who loves me . . . loves to . . . Oh yes—” Faster and faster as the drug takes hold. “Good crystal good meth little girl. You ripped me off and my wife found out and I had to tell her the whole story and she kicked me out. And here I am, can’t believe I’m back with you, you got me kicked out bad little girl, bad little girly cunt . . .”

  His movements are convulsive as he grabs the back of her head . . . his repressed anger emerging in the violence of his hip thrusts and hands taloned on the back of her neck. Faster and meaner. She’s gagging. Choking. He’s oblivious. He’s gasping, “. . . Shouldn’t do it, shouldn’t do it, but you made me bad little girl, You made me buy the stuff, made me buy you, made me . . . I didn’t want to, I don’t know what to do, how’d I get into it, I don’t know. Andrea left me . . . your fault! Your—” He punctuates the words now with vicious thrusts into her. “—fault! Your fault! Your fault!”

  She’s still gagging, choking, but now only resisting feebly. The heroin was the synthetic stuff, hard to gauge its strength, more than she bargained for.

  Perrick’s singing idiotically: “Heroin and speed, you and me, heroin and speed, you and me, you down and me up, never quite enough, heroin and speed make her bleed make her sorry she stole from me—”

  She’s choking more and more. He holds himself deep in her, forcing a sustained deep throat . . . her struggles are now like mock motions of a sleeper acting out a dream.

  Perrick’s babbling, “Bad girl, little ripoff artist, broke my heart, take my dick, show you’re sorry . . . SHIIIIIT!” As he orgasms and she stops moving. He slumps over her. Hugs her to his groin. “Fuck. I’m sorry I got way too . . .” He straightens up, panting. “Hope I didn’t hurt you . . .”

  He tries to pull away from her. Frowns. Sees he’s stuck—or she’s not letting go. She’s otherwise totally limp.

  Perrick muttering: “Said I was sorry. Come on. Let go. You’re hurting me. Shit you got my nuts in your mouth too . . . how’d that—?” Yelling now: “Hey! Suzie? You’re hurting me, seriously! What is this, I’m supposed to give you more money or—” He stops, grimacing with clamping pain at his groin. Bending to look under the coat. She’s beyond unconscious. He can see the profound emptiness of her. A slackness beyond slack. Already tinged blue. And at the corners of her jaws the muscles are bunched with a signature of finality. She’s clamped onto his dick and his balls, both in her mouth, her teeth clamped like a sadist’s cock-ring over the root of his maleness. “Jesus fucking Christ! Suzie! Don’t be dead, come on, that’s a fuckin’ bitchy thing to do to me! Don’t be—” He checks her pulse at her throat. “I don’t fucking . . . She is. She’s dead. Shit, shit, shit!”

  He tries to ease her off . . . when that doesn’t work, makes an effort, tells himself to stay calm, as he attempts to yank free.” Awwwwwwwwwhhhhh shiiiiiit! Fuuuuuuck!”

  It hurts.

  He takes a deep breath. Forces a measure of relaxation into his limbs. Then tries again to wrench her loose.

  Searing pain.

  He yowls. Then he stands there, panting, feeling the weight of her hanging from his genitals. He’s holding her up by his genitals. He moves to try to get her head more in the light, then attempts to work his th
umbs between her teeth, try to pry her off. Pushes—

  Crunching pain. Some sorta death-reflex, he figures. She’s crunching down harder on him every time he tries to pry her loose. Like punishment for the attempt . . .

  “Owww fuck goddammit!”

  A banging at the door.

  He recognized Buck’s geeky voice coining from outside the hotel door: “Yo! You got Suzie in there! Say hey you got my lady in there, dudeski?!”

  Perrick mutters breathlessly to himself, “Oh shit it’s her fuckin’ pimp!” Then yelling at Buck, “No, no man she—she split!”

  “Hey bullshit! Come on, man! Get over here, open this door!”

  Whining, Perrick grabs the corpse under the armpits and drags it along with an awkwardness that seems a weirdly apt choreographic parody of his path through life. When he gets to the vicinity of the door he’s got her turned the wrong way, she’d be visible if he opened the door, and there’s not enough room for a “U-turn” so he has to bend over—grimacing horribly—and grab her skirt and sort of lift her at the hips, so her back is humped, and he does a little capering hump-swivel-hump-swivel hump-swivel move, till he gets her turned around. He whines some more as Buck pounds the door. Now Perrick’s standing sideways with respect to the door, the body behind it. He adjusts the raincoat. Unlocks the door and opens it some—trying his best for fake composure—and opens the door only enough so that he’s peering around the side of it.