Bad to the Bones(23)
I couldn’t even breathe, I was so horrified. I felt like my brain was bleeding, my mind closing down in on itself, like a box folding flat. Maddy must have noticed, because she took my arm in support. I was wheezing like an asthmatic, probably in the throes of a panic attack, but I managed to say, “He’s looking for me, Brian. I just haven’t gone back yet. I’m having too good of a time with my friends.”
“Ha!” Brian barked again. “You think he’s looking for you? Then you’re just as delusional as those other zombies who follow him around like some Walking Dead corpses. I just talked to my buddy Rick up there. He said there’s already some new mechanic working on bikes in your shop.”
My heart nearly stopped. A wave of weakness washed over me and Maddy clutched at me to keep me upright. The room was becoming black. I was blacking out with shock and panic.
I found myself sitting on something solid. It wasn’t until later I realized someone had shoved a kitchen chair under my ass. I used every ounce of fiber in my soul to breathe, breathe deep! There was a fine line, I knew, between deep breathing and hyperventilating, so I tried to regulate it as the Al Pacino guy got into it with Brian.
“Listen, you f*cking juicer. You’re on our turf, you play by our rules. We’re only letting you stay here because you’re helping us with a job, but we’d kick you to the f*cking curb in a second with your balls in your mouth if we didn’t need anything from you.”
“Duji,” Lytton said warningly. “Can it. Mr…Brian here is welcome to stay as long as he wants.”
Duji backed off, but not without rattling his pool stick menacingly. “Keep your f*cking mouth shut around ladies.”
“It’s all right,” I panted, trying to clear the bubbles from the air around me. My forehead was dripping wet, rushing like a waterfall right down my face and neck. “I can handle the truth. I’ll just believe it when I see it, Brian.”
“That’s fine!” cried Brian. “Live in fantasyland all you want! All it takes is one little call to my buddy Rick and—”
Lytton snapped, “Enough, you f*cking inebriated dipso.” To me, he said soothingly, “We’ll find out a lot more tonight, Bellamy. I’ll let you know if there’s another mechanic working in your shop. Just leave it up to me. In fact, I’ve got to go. Duji, keep an eye on this…Brian. Don’t let him call anyone else until we iron this out.”
But it didn’t iron out. It remained totally crinkled, crumpled, and confused the entire night. Neither Lytton nor Knoxie called, and Maddy and I had several too many QuiQuis. I’m not sure if they helped or hastened the onset of an even bigger breakdown.
In retrospect, this was the breakthrough I needed, not a breakdown. I couldn’t possibly have gone on denying what Shakti had done to me. Only a true delusional wingnut would do that, and I was neither. I was just a seeker trying to save herself. And I had found a twisted, wicked man to believe in. No one could tell me that until I saw it myself.
He had thrown me out along with those other hammered juicers. And I was old enough to vote.
I did manage to fall asleep in Maddy’s guest room. Her rooms were so spacious, airy, and full of the night stars, it was pretty much impossible to feel bad there, but I did. I just could not get Brian’s f*cking pronouncement out of my head.
Not one of The Bare Bones denied that Brian had talked to this Rick. Not even Duji tried to claim that Brian was lying. Duji only told Brian he’d be rubbing his own lucky charm if he kept talking about Rick and the phone call.
It must be true. I was nothing to Shakti. Or he was enacting a new form of therapy where I might find enlightenment by reliving my abandonment issue—oh, f*ck that! He’s just a nasty, selfish bastard. He was the narcissistic, self-involved user looking out for Number One!
In a half-asleep state, over and over various flashes came to me. Shakti urging me to sit in his lap. “Only through penetration can you achieve an acceptance of who you are, a higher awareness of your true one-ness.” Contrary to his reputation as the “sex guru,” he wasn’t a terribly potent guy. Hundreds of times I had seen him with a limp dick. He seemed unashamed that he’d be sitting there with his stupid Buddha belly, letting it all hang out, his trouser snake looking more like a snail, all curled up placidly while young naked women romped and exercised. To make up for this physical lack, this is where I think he got off “manipulating” women’s genitals, massaging their chakras or whatever godforsaken shit I had taken as the word of God for so long.
If he wanted to get rid of me, if he had tired of me as a chosen one, why didn’t he just tell me? I’d seen him replace plenty of chosen ones over the years. Never me. The outcasts just went back out onto the farm and into new jobs. There was no shame in it. Maybe they were just too old.
I tried to shake these nauseating images. Strangely, I found myself replacing images of Shakti’s limp noodle with an image of Knoxie Hammett leaning back on his couch. His hand holding the cigarette lay across that taut six-pack, and his eyes were so clear and topaz-blue, I knew he could never lie to me. When he stabbed out the cigarette his pec rippled richly, and I remembered my mouth actually watering. I’d been responding to him, and hadn’t even known it. Now all I wanted to do was twine my fingers around the back of his neck, taste his sweat, and run my tongue down his clean-shaven throat.