Instantly, the dog goes into a grand mal seizure. It’s a fabulous Alien-monster attack imitation. Fur erect he jumps back, falls sideways, sharpens his incisors on cement. It’s all growling and frothing. He’s writhing like a fur coat knock-off in orgasm.
I’m feeling a little embarrassed for Herr Keiger. This is not your typical, household dog. Below me, at my back, what’s that! A slash of razor across defenseless skin. God damn it, I just got nipped. A sneak attack. This is Johann’s Yamamoto day.
I’ve never been bitten by anything except mosquitos. My body has remained virgin. No broken bones, no hernias, no eye glasses. Still have my tonsils and appendix. I didn’t even get pimples. After all I grew up in Brentwood.
Gottfried sees nothing. Johann looks at nothing. I study the stitching in my Guccis.
Soeur Blanche bosses the job of heaving my trunk and carpet bag into the wagon. Her authority blunter and rougher than ever. She keeps turning ponderously to give me piercing looks that I know too well. Always following me with smoldering eyes, look of a grand Inquisitor, watching for wrong or for what I never fathom.
Soeur Monique St. Aix, Sint X to Bob, then steps forward that leave-taking time to grab my arm and turn me towards her. Taller than Black Bob, I need to tilt my head back to confront that dead fish face, summoning up my ice and numbness to combat it.
“May Skinner, you have never cried. Jamais.” Her flawless French puffs dust at me like a clapped shut tome of Boileu.
“Not once since you came to us have I seen you in tears. Either you are lucky, May, or damned. I know what the others canʼt guess, that you have no religion. You live in a scandalous freedom of mind. In another time we would have burned you.”
Bitch.
The walls of the Second Avenue Laundry were lemon green. The floor ran in red tiles and she shuffled in her tennis shoes over a beach of spilled soap. Fluorescent tubing glowered maddog yellow. When she stared at the lights too long the lemongreen walls suddenly popped in a magenta sunburst way back when she’d dropped too much acid and walked barefoot through the dog shit in Tompkins Square Park.
Winter darkness took fast outside. She kept a knowing eye on the street scene. People passing were unclear, fading away into the cold.
At this time, everyday, her day changed. The altar light waned behind the plate glass.
The creatures out there no longer rushed back and forth for her enlightenment it was now she who stood illuminated for them, lit up for whatever audience might need to stop and kill some time, for whatever mischief might pause in the race to contemplate her.
Magda knew for certain that someday something on the street would come for her. It made sense, steeling yourself for being hunted down. The city taught that kind of probability.
She loomed rougher and larger. The bikini slipped down like a rubber band about her hips. At the first roll of thunder she gave a burping cry and skipped towards the windows.
Uncle Willy couldn’t help eyeing the crack of her ass where it showed above the bottom of the swimming suit.
‘Aunt Bertha’s mad because she’s got ingrown toenails and calluses and stubby legs and can’t dance at all!’
Rain came. It streaked the windows with hot, semen-like drops.
In wonder, Uncle Willy looked from the girl to the first rain they’d had for a month, then back again.
A violent explosion broke over the house, crackled down through its walls. Lightning in the mirrors.Thunder around the girl. The air broke like glass.
She began to dance.
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