God, get me out of this fucking white car. Get me to a toilet quick.
‘Jesus said that we must bring forth what is within us or else it will destroy us.’
‘But I’ve welcomed every cock, every dirty, hot and cursed one.’
‘We must bring forth what is inside us … ’
I felt myself smiling, my lips shut with shame.
‘We must bring forth what is inside us, Mira … ’
‘We must bring forth what is inside us, Mira … ’ I mimicked.
‘Or else it will destroy us.’
‘Or else it will destroy us.’
Stopped at some tracks with my eyes flashing red, I took Adi’s pillow and opened the car door. Gio didn’t stop me. I stepped out bleeding and slammed the fucking door hard. Gio waited for the lights to turn green. He drove over the tracks. I walked on water.
VIGOUR
I spat on the gravel. I was limping, bloody, heading toward the park, thinking what made me be with a strange older guy for my very first time and then never say a word? I spit on the gravel. What made me be some freakish escapee like Mary, Gio’s twelve-year-old whore? I lurched toward the lights. I could still hear his white car squealing away. Gio had flipped some kind of switch in my chest that made me horny for him while he hated me! I worshipped his body without my consent.
Fuck, what made me think that I could handle grown men, fucked-up ones like Gio and John, and then just reject them, X them out of my life? Why didn’t I call the police?
I could not handle a man or a woman. I could not be trusted with anything.
I had actually seen John again – he’d come to the club one night about a month ago with Michael, just before Adi left. I was totally freaked out when I saw them at first because it had been almost four years and I had no fucking idea how they knew I was there. I mean, they didn’t know I was there, but I was scared when they saw me they might want me back. I wanted to get high when I saw them, fucked up and high. Adi told me, though, to go over and surprise them. Fuck them, she said. Fuck what happened, past is past. Go, Mira, go be a mirror to them!
Adi was braver than me, she was always braver than me.
From the black-lit side of the room, I could see that Michael was sick. I mean, he was green, and his clothes were practically falling off him. I thought: He has AIDS. John looked like some kind of gorilla beside him.
They were drinking beer and chain-smoking. John was overexcited, eyeing all the writhing things.
‘So, it’s fifty a song, big boy,’ I said, leaning on their table, my tits in John’s face. I felt like a businessman mirror.
John immediately pulled away like he was scared of me. I started laughing at the expression on his face. I couldn’t help it. He looked like someone had just sliced off his fingertip or something. He was swallowing and swall
owing, pushing his chin into his throat.
Michael started laughing like me. ‘You still watch the Mira tapes every week, don’t you, Johnny?’
It was like John couldn’t take the sight of me so close to him. He kept retreating his head like a turtle does. I had on my pink cut-off T-shirt, the one that was so short you could see the bottoms of my tits. I was standing above John with my hands on my hips.
Me and Michael seriously couldn’t stop laughing. Michael’s eyes were the same, but everything else on his skull was shrunken.
‘What’s going on with you?’ I asked.
Michael coughed so hard he had to put out his cigarette.
‘Nothing,’ he finally got out.
‘You look like a ghost,’ I said. Then quickly added, ‘Sorry.’
‘No, Mira, it’s you that looks like shit.’ John was angry. He lit another cigarette.
‘Shut up, Johnny,’ Michael snapped. ‘Mira looks hot. You look a fuck of a lot hotter as a lady, Mirabella.’