The Fury Factory
by Jason Rubis
copyright 2000
Alright. Here we go.
The back is a narrow length of white skin, crazy with
freckles. The hips aren't overly wide and the ass isn't much to
talk about, but if you were here you'd want it. Shoulders bunched
and sullen, hung with a mess of red-blonde hair, wiry and frazzled-looking
from too much primping, too many back-and-forth dye-jobs. Still,
sun gets on it from the window and makes it shine.
One leg - and it's a long one - lifts and slides a
knee onto the chair, displaying a dirty sole with monkey toes. Now
the face, turning slowly for maximum effect and glaring over the
shoulder. Eyes wide with last night's makeup. And oh, that pout.
"Don't they realize I'm a star?"
"Some people," I tell her, "weren't raised right."
I have no clue what they she's talking about. Probably someone who
approached her at the club last night, after I left. The show has
attracted dozens of afficianados and curiosity-seekers wanting to
chat up the 'performers' or just get a look at them. Not all of
them are polite.
"I don't want to talk about it." She jerks her face
back to the window, her attention turned firmly to Bigger Things.
"Those fools," she says loftily, apparently a parting shot. She's
twenty-five years old.
I light my last cigarette. It tastes pretty bad. My
head is screaming for coffee, but I know better than to call room-service
when Ginger (what she's calling herself at the moment) started the
day loudly declaring that she's too fat (!) and hung-over to eat.
I could walk across the room and put my arms around
her. There's part of me likes that idea very much. I could let one
hand fall and caress what's on the other side of her ass, see what
happens. My stomach gets tight, thinking about that.
She woke me up last night at four, slamming the door
and falling face-first into the pillow beside mine. She let me wrap
an arm around her and bury my face in her hair, but it was like
every other time. Like doing it - or trying to - through a pane
of glass. I angled my knees up into the backs of hers, let my belly
warm her back, my breath the nape of her neck. Like she was my baby.
But you can't fuck a baby.
"I hope you're going to empty that ashtray when you're
done," Ginger sniffs, not looking at me. "It makes me look cheap
when you leave it all full like you do."
"I'm sorry," I say, inclining my head a little, with
as much irony as I think might actually get through to her. "I'll
try to do better."
"I'm going to take a shower," she informs me, stalking
over to the bathroom door. "Then I'm going to the pool. Are you
coming?"
"I'll go for a walk first," I say, thinking about
the continental breakfast they're going to serve in the lobby. Coffee,
lots of it. Hot and black.
"Don't be long," she says nervously, lingering at
the door. "We'll go together when you get back." Same old story.
She won't go anywhere alone - the pool, a club, a bookstore. But
once she's safely installed and holding court, I'll be left to wander.
I nod and she disappears into the bathroom. The shower
comes on seconds later, filling the room with steam and the rattle
of water on plastic and porcelain. I stub out my cigarette and leave
without emptying the ashtray.
To hell with it.
"No, you can't slide down that slide," Miss Girl tells
me. She's followed me into the little playground the hotel has for
the guests' kids. I'm sitting crouched on the sliding-board's edge;
Miss Girl is standing beside me, looking incredibly out of place
in her tight red dress, shoes clutched mock-indignantly to one hip.
Noon sun has bleached the slide and swing-sets and the playground's
ankle-deep layer of sand an unbearable, blistering white. There
are abandoned ice-cream wrappers all over the place instead of kids.
The heat is inescapable; Miss Girl has her feet thrust beneath the
sand as a kind of halfway measure. I can see her toes wiggling smugly
under the blanket of white grit.
I'm feeling argumentative for some reason. I squint
up at Miss Girl and hold up a finger. "Number one: what makes you
think I have any intention of sliding down this thing? Number two:
if I did have any intention of doing it, why shouldn't I?"
"Because that slide is for children," Miss Girl sniffs.
"A grown man shouldn't be sliding down no kiddy-slides, you know
that."
Miss Girl is called Miss Girl, I think, chiefly because
if she were called Miss Thing (and I believe she was, early in her
career), everyone would think she was a joke. I only met her last
night at the club, but I can tell you already Miss Girl is no dummy.
She's as lean as Ginger, but considerably older. Too, Ginger's body
still has some faint suggestion, here and there, of softness. You
wouldn't dare call it baby-fat, but it's there.
Age has leached all the softness out of Miss Girl's
frame. Her fingers especially are like leathery claws; a dark, oily
brown, tipped with ruby, constantly snapping and gesturing. Even
her hair looks hard. But her eyes, under the brim of her big, floppy
sun-hat, are amazing; they're abundantly-lashed and evil.
"And you ain't no child, are you?" she says, smiling
just a little.
I get up laughing, patting her shoulder as I move
gently past her. I like Miss Girl, but she's dangerous. They're
all dangerous.
"Oh, I know where you're going," Miss Girl says, slipping
into step beside me.
"Yeah? Where?" I ask, keeping my eyes averted like
I'm afraid she could put a spell on me.
"You're going to that heathen," Miss Girl says. "That
beast. That other queen of yours."
I know she's talking about Ginger, lying out by the
pool, risking sun-stroke so the other guests - mostly vacationing
suburbanites at this time of day - can get a good gawk at her.
"Other queen?" I say, a laugh edging out of my voice.
"How many do I have?"
"Some men like to play little games," Miss Girl informs
me. I can hear her smile. "Some men like to be coaxed." Her hand
slides over my ass and I rise up comically on my toes, scooting
forward out of her reach.
We're out by the pool now, weaving our way between
meandering lines of buff, bored-looking men and women. I'm moving
faster, keeping two or three steps ahead of Miss Girl. The quicker
I get to Ginger, the quicker she'll back off. Maybe.
"It only takes time, baby," Miss Girl says behind
me. "I know what you really want."
"I'm glad someone does," I tell her. And there's Ginger,
finally. She spots me the same time I spot her, sprawled on a beach-chair
beside the glassy blue smear of pool. Someone thin and blonde and
out of it is sitting on the concrete beside her.
"Kevin!" Ginger shouts, leaning forward on and gesturing
at me like I'm a waiter. "Kevin, I have made a decision!"
"And what's that?" I ask. There's not another chair
near her so I sink down to a squat on the unoccupied side of her
chair.
"My name. I'm going to change it. Well, not change
it, but change the spelling. J-I-N-J-U-R, like General Jinjur in
the Oz books. Do you like it?"
"It's fabulous,"
