And The Hunter Home

She started to come before I was fully inside her and I wasn't far behind, losing my self-control with the helplessness of an adolescent. My reflexes had atrophied through lack of use. Erica's orgasm was understated but all-consuming. I watched the arching of her foot, the blush that washed over her breasts. The sharp right angle formed by her arm and her shoulder made me think of a ship's yard-arm used as a gibbet, the hanged corpse of a mutinous slave swinging in the trade winds, spurting come from a ligature-induced erection. Mourir, amour...

'Zack.' Erica was the first to break the ensuing silence. 'He could walk in.'

'I don't care,' I said. 'I never want to leave.'

'You have to.' She sat up and reached for her sweatshirt.

'I can come around tomorrow,' I said.

'No. Not here. No sense in shitting on our own doorstep. What's the matter?'

'What?'

'You went pale.'

'It's nothing...the boat.'

'What about it? Oh. The boat. Of course.' She leaned forward to kiss me. 'Call me tomorrow...'

I looked in on Babs when I got home. The bedroom was like a funeral parlour. She was flat on her back, snoring with a damp flannel upon her forehead. Though the room stank of camphor, I could smell Erica's cunt on my fingers. I made an involuntary sign of the cross, out of respect for the dead, and went to shower.

*

Zack looked wretched when I saw him in the garage the next morning. Slovenly, rattled, either mid or immediately post-bender He was ahead of me in the queue for the till, causing a delay in a dispute with the Chinese girl over change.

'I know I gave you twenty,' he said.

'No twenty in till.'

'The Germans should have killed more of you. Fucking robbers.' He fumbled with his water and rizlas before stumbling off while she looked on in disgust. I sipped my coffee and burned my mouth.

But nothing could put a wrinkle in my buzz. The world around me was vibrating, full of a new strangeness and vitality. Even the Esso garage. My phone distended my pocket like the erection I had been toting around since I had woken up. I wanted to call her, to hear her say, Yes, I was thinking of you as well...In the car, I rang both her home and mobile numbers but there was no answer. She would be on her way to work, I decided, mildly spooked.

By lunchtime, I was in a state of lovesick psychosis. Still no answer, to a body of calls and texts that was rapidly approaching stalker proportions. My vanity refused to accept the very real possibility that she had bottled it. There had to be another explanation. Maybe something had happened with Zack. She had confronted him in his fucked-up state, there had been a scene, a domestic...I started to panic. I'd have to go over there.

My secretary didn't buy my galloping stomach bug but she did as she was told and cancelled all my afternoon appointments. I drove straight into SUV hell, junior infants school-run gridlock. When my phone rang, I almost had a seizure. It was Babs.

'Can you bring home milk?' she said.

'How's your head?'

'Fine. Are you in the car?'

'I was at the bank. You know who I saw this morning?'

'Who? I hope you're hands free.'

'Zack. Wasted out of his head in the Esso. The boy is a mess.'

'Addictive personalities run in families. It's learned behaviour.'

'Are you at home?'

'Yeah.'

'Maybe you should check on Erica. Zack could be unpredictable in that state.'

'I saw her this morning...she was on her way out. Look, I can't talk. Don't forget the milk.'

She hung up. My sense of relief was short-lived, though. I still didn't know why Erica wasn't returning my calls. Paranoia revved up when I thought of the free afternoon I had scored. Where did a person go if they didn't want to be seen? The boat seemed like the only safe option.

I drove towards the marina along the coast road. The sea and sky were midwinter dull, ashen like the flesh of a terminal case. Turbulent water imitated the churning of my guts. I pulled apart the glove compartment in search of an emergency Xanax but only found a Rennie. My lifeless phone jeered at me. Libertine...The eyes that looked back at me from the rear-view appeared more Christ-stricken than sensualist. It wasn't a good look.

My hopeless wish that I would find Erica waiting for me on the boat proved to be just that. Below deck, neglect was beginning to assert itself. Cobwebs, must, the smell of incipient decay. I found a litre of Bombay Sapphire under the sink in the galley and fixed a drink, using lukewarm Evian from a bottle in my briefcase as a mixer. It was a disgusting concoction. Harry's fingerprints, or maybe Liberty's, were all over my glass and I added mine to them as I walked through to the stateroom.

The bed had been made up only to be pulled asunder again. Two bodies. You could tell from the creases on the undersheet. An ashtray on the floor contained two empty condom wrappers and a roach stained with pink lip-gloss...

'Excuse me? Oh...'

I turned around, tasting regurgitated gin and water at the back of my throat. Liberty was standing in the doorway, looking at me over the top of a pair of outsize shades.

'I'm a friend of Harry's,' I said, taking a step backwards. 'Was. A neighbour. I'm looking after the boat. For Erica, I mean, Erica. His wife...'

'I know who Erica is. She got a boat now. A sea-going woman.'

She walked to the bed and dropped her bag. Her nails were long and crimson, each one bearing a bend sinister in diamante.

'You got a drink?' she said. Her accent was French-African.

I made her a gin and Evian, apologizing for the poverty of the drinks cabinet. She took a sip and shrugged.

'Drank worse piss. You're a sea-going man, then.'

'I can handle a boat.'

'A man should be able to.'

I stared at a chink between two buttons of her blouse, wondering why none of this felt strange. She looked at me with amusement but also with a vague contempt. If she was a piece of ass on .avi, she was infinitely more so in person. Her fleshtone was rich, reminiscent of fertile earth stained with blood spilled in a resource war. They thought magic would make them immune to bullets but they were wrong...I struggled to remain PC in thought but the harder I tried, the more offensive became the imagery that suggested itself to me. Evolution, chess sets at twilight, Middle Passage gang-rape...

'You always stare,' she said.

'Have we met?'

She brushed off the question by opening her suit jacket.

'Funny,' she said, coming towards me.

'Am I?'

'Funny man. See if you can remember.'

She sank to her knees, looking up at me with dead yellow eyes, her hands courteous and mechanical upon my fly. Replicant, I thought. A streamlined pleasure model. She took out my semi-hard cock and held it between her thumb and forefinger, the gesture a marriage of professionalism and revulsion. Black chick's burden. You had to work with what you were given.

I felt the same combination in her mouth when she started to blow me, nurturing my growing hardness with the air of an indulgent nurse. Liberty sucked dick like the porn whores I beat off to while Babs was sleeping a few doors away. Slobbering over meat with a relish that made a man forget he was being hustled. She worshipped my cock, anointing it in spit, breathing reverently along its length. I sat down on the bed and took her head in both hands, clutching her braids, anticipating her cunt in the startling pink of her mouth. But in the midst of pleasure, I felt the strangest sensation, like I was experiencing another's déja vu, a longing to be able to trust a lover who I knew was leading me into the abyss. It was calf love, the kind that moistens the eyes of teenagers.

Our love is the most special bond. Flesh to its own flesh...

I pushed Liberty's head away from me in panic.

'What the fuck?' she said.

'Who are you?'

'Ok, fuck it.' She stood up, leaving me feel very small and exposed. Those nails looked ominously useful.

'Whyn't you clean your dick?' She picked up her drink and swallowed it in one. 'I told you. It tastes like bad milk.'

'You were fucking Harry,' I said. 'I saw you with Erica.'

'You need help,' she said.

'Now you sound like my wife.'

'A lucky woman.'

She grabbed her bag and left as suddenly as she had come in. The boat creaked, rocking gently as a swell washed in from the Irish Sea. Whores love...I couldn't stop staring at my pants, crumpled in indignity around my ankles like a potty trainee's...

*

SUGAR DOLLZ. Both L's inverted to form Cyrillic G's. Thus, SUGAR DOGGZ. The club was in the next plaza over from Schwartzhammer Gorman's. I couldn't remember leaving the boat and didn't know how I had ended up by the Quays again but it felt right. I was in my natural element.

The bouncer, lifting the rope to allow me enter, was bald and appeared to have been carved from the meat of a whale's pizzle.

'Evening.'

'How are you?' I handed him a twenty which had appeared in my hand.

'Thank you, sir. Chilly, this evening.'

I hadn't noticed that either. My breath plumed, tainted with pink and blue neon light.

'Not seen you in a while,' he said.

'I died. But I came back.'

'How'd you go?'

'Drowning.'

'Nasty. Still, your family must be pleased.'

'I'll take death over my wife any day, thanks.'

He laughed, leaned forward.

'She's on in a minute,' he said. 'A brand new routine.'

He was obviously fucking her. He fucked all the girls. All of them did. After hours, in the private booths. Once I had stood with them in a queue. My poor sweetheart. You earned your money that night...

A lift took me to the first floor where a redhead took my jacket. Hazmat, they called her. Formerly a dancer, she had given chlamydia to half the financial district. The room was arranged around a circular bar which formed the circumference of the dance-floor at its centre. Hanging above, from chains whose upper limits were lost among banks of multicoloured spotlights, was a series of cages. The girls danced in them, sometimes used them for descending to the stage at the beginning of their sets. I walked towards the bar, private dances writhing at the periphery of my vision. If you hadn't already shot your load, and could negotiate a price, you could take the girl to one of the cubicles out back. White chipboard walls, a cot and a curtain across the entrance, like an A and E examination room. Sticky surfaces that no amount of detergent could make clean. She and I had met in one. Love can blossom in the strangest places.

What about a guy who marries a hustler? What's that all about?

I bought a vodka and Red Bull. The barmaid, another washed-up stripper, looked at me with the hatred that only spurned lovers can harbour. On the PA, Lil' Kim mouthed off...If I was a dude, I'd tell y'all to suck my dick...You said it.

The lights above the stage began to strobe, revealing a crouching figure that I knew was Erica. Oiled flesh sparking with trapped glitter. I didn't need to look around to know that I was by myself at the bar. Even the staff had vanished. This performance would be for me alone.

She rose, humping the pole, her ascent in perfect sync with the music. Her head snapped back and forth, reducing her face to a blur amidst the scourging of her hair. I could feel each lash, much as Liberty's ancestors, chained to rubber trees, had learned about Christian values.

An idle soul shall suffer hunger...

Who's the other guy?/Hope you know you're paying extra/For this fuckin third eye...

She swung her body upside down on the pole and slipped down to the floor until she was prostrate on her stomach, bucking her hips in response to the thrusts of a phantom lover. Only her mouth was visible behind a canopy of fallen hair. Our love is the most special bond...each word more abusive than its predecessor. Her lips goaded me, their gloss containing a constellation of flickering stars, each one circled by a system of dying planets. She rolled on to her back and arched her body in a piss-take of orgasm. Or maybe childbirth.

In the maternity ward, wracked with pain, she squeezed my hand and called me a worthless cunt.

A cage began its descent into the cloud of dry ice that had formed around her. In spite of the fog and pyrotechnics, I could see a figure inside. I knew who it was and so did Erica. Her body formed a humpback bridge, thighs apart as if in readiness for penetration. The rapture in her pose described the polar opposite of my variety of shallow lust. Every cell of her screamed out for the descending mass to return to her, as once she had strained to push it into the world. It was almost touching her as it came to a halt. A gate on its side opened and its occupant emerged. Flesh to its own flesh...I watched the boy crouch down as she held out her arms for him, lowering her body until she was prone once again. Their bodies came together like yin and yang and I saw for the first time how successful she had been in disassembling him and and remaking him to her own specifications. There was nothing left of his father in him apart from a physical resemblance. But that was how she had wanted it. She had loved her man but his corruption had made it impossible for her to live with him. So she had effaced him and started again with their son. Her and Liberty...the perversity of the act was somehow admirable.

He picked her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist. They were fucking and continued to fuck as he sat them into the cage. I watched them ascend, the pulley chain creaking beneath the fading music. Someone behind me clapped sarcastically.

I became aware of my surroundings again, shivering with caffeine overload and paranoia. It was a set-up. This was the place, just as the boat had been the first time. I looked towards the entrance, just in time to see the bouncer from downstairs emerge. How much had she paid him? He'd do it for fun. Hazmat directed him to a fracas in one of the booths where a trick had grabbed his dancer by the cunt. The girl gesticulated, spitting Carpathian oaths. Even if the guy hadn't been drunk, he wouldn't have been worth a shit. He was unaccustomed to violence, unlike the man who now bore down on him. Seize, bind, neutralize. It was effortless. And I was next.

Once the bouncer had disappeared with his miscreant, I made my move. I necked my drink and walked around the bar towards the gents and the fire exit next to its entrance. The alarm went off as soon as I pushed down the bar but I was already outside, down the fire escape and into the yard below. A wavering stack made up of crates of empty Coke bottles helped me to the top of the wall, where I paused, reluctant to launch myself into the darkness of the street below. The sound of cleats upon the fire escape helped me to overcome all that. I hung and dropped. And dropped...

*

The front door was open. Babs' car was out front, its engine still warm. Behind me, visible through a screen of branches, a single window was lit in Erica's. Zack's room. I ran inside, hoping he hadn't seen me. I just wanted to go to bed and sleep dreamlessly. Explanations could wait.

I was halfway up the stairs when she called to me from the front room. Fuck. There was no point in ignoring her. I went back down, unable to remember whether or not I had always felt such indifference towards her. There must have been some passion when we were together at first. But I couldn't even remember the first time we had met. Nor was I bothered.

She was standing by the window, looking out through a gap in the curtains. I leaned against the door-jamb, playing up my exhaustion.

'You forgot the milk,' she said, without looking at me. 'You look terrible. How do you feel?'

'Beat. And you should look at yourself.'

She cleaned her glasses with a tissue, looking as drained as I felt. I wasn't unsympathetic. Spending every day with personality disorders must have been wearing. All that self-absorption...

'You went to the boat,' she said. 'What happened?'

Not her as well...

'You can tell me. It's okay.'

'They killed Harry,' I said. 'Erica and Liberty. For his money. And for their fucked-up shit with the kid.'

'Liberty...' She nodded. 'Of course...'

'They're going to kill me.'

'No-one's going to kill you. Come and sit down. I want to show you something.'

She sat down on the sofa and opened her laptop. I didn't move. I didn't want to see what was on there.

'Don't be scared,' she said. 'We can go to sleep afterwards.'

Sleep...the thought was as numbing as an opiate. I walked towards her, watching her become less familiar with each step. My wife...?

'You always loved the sea. Ever since you were a boy. You played at pirates.' She took my hand as I sat down next to her. 'Because you could have adventures at sea. Nothing was fixed like it was on land. You loved the uncertainty, the constant motion.'

Was she drunk? I looked at her through my reflections in her glasses but her eyes were impossible to read. She drove a flash drive home and caressed the mousepad.

'But I get seasick,' I said. 'You know that.'

'You told me.' A picture of Erin Go Bra came up on the computer screen. 'Toy boats in the bathtub. Then real ones. Imaginary adventures, then real ones.'

Zack and me can go fishing...

Babs brought up another picture. Harry and his friend that I recognized, but couldn't place. It was me.

'This is fucking bullshit,' I said. 'I saw that picture already. You shopped me in there.'

'I did what? What do you see?' Her fingers on the mousepad were crooked, deliberate as a concert pianist's. 'Tell me.'

Me and...When I looked again, Harry was gone. There was only me.

'Real friends. And imaginary ones.'

She opened the .avi. and we watched Liberty and I fucking. All I could think was how much of a jerkoff I looked in those sunglasses.

'Turn it off,' I said.

'You need to see.'

'No. I don't. You get some sick pleasure out of all this?'

'Harry...'

'I'm not Harry!'

'Then who are you?'

'I'm...'

It was a good question.

'We decided the best course of treatment was to play along with your delusions,' she said. 'Nurture the absurdity in the hope that you'd finally come to recognize it. Part of it involved me playing the role of your wife. If it's any consolation, I was never comfortable with the deception. I'm sorry.'

We...

'Where are they?' I said.

'Who?'

'The rest of you...Erica. Zack.' I looked around, half expecting to see them. Babs, or whoever she was, said, fuck it, under her breath.

'They might be at home,' she said. She sounded bored, disgusted by the words. 'Why don't you go and see?'

I tried to stand but my legs gave way and I crawled to the window. There had been a light on earlier. Now there was nothing. No light. No house.

'Both of you wanted a child so badly.' Babs' disembodied voice seemed to be issuing from a tannoy. 'It still amazes me, you know. The eloquence of the unconscious. That your delusion should take that particular form, above all others. The thankless, reprobate boy. The idealized other.'

'Erica...'

'No-one could save her. Nobody saw it coming. She was dead long before she took the boat out that day. The first step is accepting that fact...'

She trailed off, unwilling to waste any more breath. I heard the click of a briefcase lock, the creaking of her shoe leather.

'We have to finish this now, Harry,' she said. 'We thought you were making progress. Obviously we'll need to recalibrate.'

She crouched down and took my arm. I continued to stare out the window as the needle pierced my flesh.