“WHAT’S THE MATTER, you don’t eat anymore?” Coco asked as I cracked open a fifth of Bacardi that I kept stored back in the apartment. “This place is a mess,” she said.
I hadn’t said a word all the way back from CBGB’s. I wasn’t thinking about anything either, except how to get drunk as quickly as possible. I really was too tired to think about Charlotte killing anyone. I didn’t have the energy to strategize or negotiate or imagine. I was just beat.
“Still no stereo?”
“There’s a radio.”
She plopped herself down on the couch, putting her dirty feet all over my dirty sleeping bag.
“Any more books?”
“No, Coco, I still have one book. It’s over there behind the candles. Buy me another one if it bothers you so much.”
She stepped over a new wave of burning novenas.
“Think you have a future in mortuary science?”
“Don’t be a drag, Coco. Look at the book.”
She dug out the battered copy of Patti Smith’s poems which I’d kept over since she was hot, and now that there are people who have never heard of her, that book is becoming harder to find. But thank God it is still available if you really need it.
“Show me the good ones,” Coco said, throwing the book in my lap. “Show me the really great ones.”
That was easy. The book just fell open to them.
“It’s all about Judith. A woman Patti loved called Judith.”
“But she’s not gay,” Coco said, completely relaxed. “She’s married with a baby and living in Michigan.”
“So what, she still loved Judith. Listen.”
And carefully, I read aloud, knowing it would fill Coco with inspiration and happiness.
When all else failed: bird, magician, desert mirage, the prospect of gold and riches beyond the cloak and sleeve of marco polo, I attached all to a woman.
“More,” Coco said.
Blushing monument: pink sphinx, sizzling squirrel. fallen pharaoh. the exhaustion of the mind which attempts to penetrate the mystery of her.
“More,” Coco said.
I love her like the jews love the land. I love her like judas loved jesus.
“Yes,” Coco said. “Yes, how beautiful. How wonderful. What joy in words. It’s making my heart work overtime. It’s setting my heart on fire.”
“I know,” I said. “I love Patti Smith.”
We both sat there for a minute. Then I said, “Coco, tell me a story about a woman, a happy story.”
“Okay,” she said, flipping through the long-ago back pages of her notebook, looking at her messages and talking them together into a story right then and there. A story that never happened but would always sound true.
“The story is called ‘This and That,’” Coco said.
And I repeated, “‘This and That.’”
“And it’s also about Judith. The same Judith that Patti loved, but years later. She came to my house. It was three o’clock. I left the door open and was cutting strawberries over the sink, listening to her climb the stairs.
“‘Hello, gorgeous,’ I said before she stepped in.
“‘How do you know I’m gorgeous today? You haven’t even seen me yet.’
“That sentence started out in the hall and continued through the threshold of the apartment as she took off her sunglasses and laid them on the counter with a bouquet of orange tiger lilies. All for me.
“‘I love how they jiggle,’ she would say later, fingering them, ‘like breasts.’
“But at that moment she was still nervous, having come from the bed of her other lover.
“‘I just knew,’ I said, kissing her, being very quiet because inside I was thrilled. I was so happy that she had come to me.
“After some tabletop talk over tea and a joint, I could embrace her from behind, naturally, because I love her so easily.
“‘Relax, darlin’, you can relax.’
“And for that moment, I felt her love me. For the rest of the day, though, I was never sure.
“We talked about this and that. It was interesting but what’s more important, I was watching her. Then she said, ‘Let’s go,’ and stripped to the waist like a sumo wrestler. We kissed, almost dancing, naked, feeling each other and the sun. It was so sunny and bright. Then we went to bed doing this and that.
“‘When I was making love with you,’ she said, ‘I was thinking about Sappho and how her fragments are just what it’s like. Everything wet for a moment and then something different like a rising passion and then something else.’
“She was lying in my favorite position on her back with both hands under her head, like a guy, really. It’s the masculine things about her that I’m most attracted to: her gravel voice, her wiry arms, her thick black wristwatch. When she lies on her back like that and talks, I could say a prayer on her chest.
“Also, she’s always thinking. Sometimes too much, but that’s where I come in because sometimes I can be girly and help her relax. I can make her laugh. I know how to make her feel better. This is the Judith who is the woman who loves me in the afternoon.”
“That’s a nice story,” I said. “But I’m really worried, Coco, because I think that Charlotte Punkette and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“What are you talking about?” Coco said.
“Daniel said that Charlotte is a dope fiend.”
“Well, at least she’s not a junkie.”
“Why do you find everything so fucking acceptable? You know, Coco, some things are just too outrageous to let them go by.”
“Like what?” She had on that insolent attitude where she could focus in and out of sincerity. I think she learned it from Useless Phlegm.
“Like fucking Delores,” I said, really loud. “Like when fucking Delores said she loved me but she was really looking for a place to live. Do you think that’s something I should take lying down?”
“Do you have a choice?”
“Fuck you, Coco Flores.”
“Well, fuck you. Did you ever even ask her why she does what she does so you can drop it already?”
I saw that Coco couldn’t decide whether or not to give in and let me say what I needed to say.
“Yeah, I asked her. I asked her why she said she was my friend and then didn’t act like one.”
“So what was her answer?”
Coco looked around for something to do and ended up lighting a cigarette and flicking the ashes on the floor.
“She said, ‘I changed my mind.’”
As soon as I said that, I remembered the whole scene, like it was playing again on the video screen that sat somewhere between my mind and the back of my eyes. I remembered the day Delores said, ‘I changed my mind.’ She was sitting in the living room with a plastic bowl and a disposable razor, shaving her legs. I sat opposite her wishing she would cut herself. She was wearing green sequined hot pants and her legs were so white. I wished she would slit them open so I could watch the blood run all over everything like spilled paint. Her face was blank. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.
She left the bowl lying there, where Coco was now smoking. It was filled with little hairs. Then she put on some perfume and went over to her new girlfriend’s house. I was stuck here with my nostrils full of Chanel. It hung in the air all around me and I had to sit and stare at that tiny bottle on the dresser, waiting for the scent to settle in my gut. I wanted to smash it.
“I don’t understand you,” Coco said. “You think normal people are running around killing each other and then you blame everything on Delores. You’re just drunk.”
Right then I got so angry I wanted to punch everyone. I was one of those people who talks to themselves and punches the air.
“Delores was a cunt,” I said. “Sex with her made me sick. She always did the same thing. Whenever she wanted it, she’d pull her shirt up and bounce around, shoving her tits in my face.”
“I don’t care about you and Delores,” Coco said, putting out the cigarette with her heel like we were on some street corner. “I used to but it got to be too much. You’re sick. You need counseling. Here, let’s talk about something else. Look at this fluorescent paint I bought. Hot pink.”
I picked up the little jar.
“Let’s paint my house,” I said and smashed the jar against the wall so there was pink glass all over the place. “Let’s slam-paint my house.”
“You’re too weird. It’s not eccentric anymore. I’m going home.”
“I’m going to cut Sunshine’s face open with a can opener.”
“Look,” Coco said. “Your feelings are too large for the moment, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because everything in life is temporary so you have to live only for the moment and this is not the moment for which you should be living like this.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘No’?” Coco said, exasperated. “Yes! If you would believe in and be satisfied by what I just said, you would be a much happier person.”
“No,” I said. “It’s just too much. I’ll never give in like that. My anger is justified, therefore I need to maintain it until I get justice.”
“Then keep on crying,” Coco said, as if it was nothing.
I picked a little jar of green paint out of Coco’s purse and threw that against the other wall so there was green glass too.
“Look,” Coco said. “The first time was weird enough but the second time was sick because by then you knew what was going to happen but you did it anyway. That paint cost me eight bucks.”
I didn’t feel like saying anything right then. Not “fuck you” or “shut up,” so I just sat there and Coco sat there too. Then she started braiding her hair. Then she left.
When the door slammed shut, I pulled out my gun from under the couch and held it, first in the palm of my hand, then gripped it cowboy style. It smelled like stale licorice or polished wood and it tasted like Delores. I decided that day that I would carry it with me at all times, until it took me directly to her. Then I would make Delores suffer. It was the only way that I could be happy.