The Exquisite by Laird Hunt Page A

the poorly cut rubber eyeholes of a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask. My face stung. It was also hot. Every now and then I would growl and lift my arms. They both had on smeared costume makeup. Neither of them spoke. Earlier they had sent me out into the backyard with a trowel to “dig for the devil.” A cracked Coke bottle lay dripping in the middle of the floor where my father had thrown it. Before he left, for good as it turned out, he had come out to the backyard, taken the trowel from me, and told me first that he was going to go try to find my mother and second about a soda shop in the Bronx where ice-cold Coke ran nonstop out of a spigot attached to the wall.
    I yawned, leaned back against my pillows, looked at the clock: Job wouldn’t be back for a while. Aunt Lulu was still mumbling. She had once attended a church that encouraged its members to speak in tongues. She had not forced me to attend, but she had tried to teach me the proper technique. I went around the house after her lesson talking with my tongue sticking out. When I spoke in tongues to her, she pinched my ear and told me it wasn’t something that was supposed to be done casually. Mumbling was fine though. There was a good deal of it around our household. Aunt Lulu liked to mumble to her cats. She also liked to sit in the kitchen, slightly hunched forward, and mumble to herself. Like she was doing now. Like she had been doing that day when I had stood in the doorway and, well aware that she had poured enough vodka and orange juice down her throat onto the palmful of Halcion she swallowed every day to take out a small stegosaurus, watched her head droop slowly downward toward her plate of macaroni and cheese.
    After a while she took a deep breath, put her hands on her knees, and looked up.
    They tell me you’re in trouble, boy.
    It’s not that bad, Aunt Lulu.
    That’s a lie, boy.
    I’m not lying to you, Aunt Lulu. They’re doctors—they exaggerate. I’m getting good help. I’ve got friends here. It’s under control.
    I watched her take this in, turn it around once or twice, then forget it.
    I’m leaving now, boy. I just came to tell you I’m not paying for you to live like a dog and do more bad things and lie in a hospital bed reading books.
    Good-bye, Aunt Lulu, I said.
    Good-bye, boy, she said. She smacked me again, not so hard this time. Then stood and walked out.

FIFTEEN
    My ears still ringing, I put the note in my pocket and walked across the park to Mr. Kindt’s. On my way, I stopped to watch some kids slugging it out over access to an open swing. It was a pretty good fight, as far as fights involving small kids go—there were actually some punches thrown and a couple of kicks—and I was a little sorry when a tall woman with a large mouth and hands the size of coffee cakes came over and broke it up. For a second it occurred to me to say something to her, to tell her to relax a little, let the kids fight, a swing, for God’s sake, was worth fighting about, but then I realized I was about to pass out. I went over to a bench and sat very still, then leaned over and put my head between my knees, then, when I felt a little better, sat up and sneezed.
    You’ve got blood all over your face and shirt, said a green-haired, well-pierced woman walking by with a three-legged wrinkle-faced dog.
    I know, I just got murdered, I said.
    She looked at me, the golden hoop in her right eyebrow rising significantly.
    What’s your dog’s name? I said.
    He doesn’t have a name.
    Does he bite?
    Yes, he probably does.
    Look, I’m in an interesting line of work. If I had a business card, I’d give you one, I said.
    Yes, she said. I bet you would.
    Can I have your number?
    No.
    Out of the corner of my eye I could see a woman and a young girl tilting and gently shaking what I realized was a kind of trap when I saw two mice fall out of it onto the soft dirt next to an evergreen.
    What you see in this city, I said.
    Every day, the woman with the