A Tear in the Veil Page 6

  And leave it her to look totally natural dancing to dubstep while dressed for jazzy swing.

  Felix heads back to the computer area and sees that his neighbor is not a skilled seat protector. Awful, actually. A thin scenester kid has taken the seat. The former neighbor notices Felix down the aisle and gives him a look of genuine disappointment. She mouths a “Sorry.” He shrugs and waves goodbye by curling the fingers around his drink cup up and down a few times and walks to the next aisle. All the spots are taken. Next one, same deal. He looks around and one of the projections on the ceiling grabs his attention.

  Eye surgery.

  He winces and looks at another.

  Time-lapse of flowers blooming.

  That’s better.

  He lets his eyes go from one to the next.

  A bald politician having a bullet for breakfast in front of a lectern. Sheesh.

  My Little Pony. Home video through a window of a trash truck collecting. A foreign reporter having his head sawed off like cattle by a fundamental extremist.

  Felix cringes and feels a little ill. He’s seen it before and it’s not quite as sickening without the soundtrack of a human animal being slaughtered but he still can’t understand how a human being could do that to another for abstract philosophical reasons.

  Care Bears. That commercial where an old lady “returns” a tire through the shop window. A space shuttle launch that ends in a fireball.

  Cheery.

  His eye movement combined with the randomness of the video clips creates a kind of accidental narrative. It strikes him that it would be almost impossible to ever experience it the same way twice.

  His eyes come to rest on what he can see of the film projection on the far wall. Curiosity kicks in.

  As Felix cruises through the rest of the home/free area, he sees the setup of the far side more clearly. There are several large couches of varying designs and states of repair and a few big recliner style chairs. They are arranged in a series of rough concentric half-circles around a big sheet tacked to the wall with its bottom edge a few feet off the ground. On a rolling cart near the rear of this area is a sixteen millimeter projector clacking and ticking away. A large speaker on the ground near the cart is connected by a quarter-inch cable and pumps out the mono soundtrack.

  Felix finds a spot on a big, puffy couch next to a guy who’s passed out. The guy squirms a bit then settles.

  Felix gathers pretty quickly that it’s a faux documentary. It goes between animated diagrams, a person looking into the camera earnestly in some kind of bunker set who also serves as the “Voice of God” narrator, and grainy footage of extreme violence.

  After a few minutes, he’s laughing to the point of tears. The documentary is about three-toed sloths. Only, three-toed sloths are actually bloodthirsty, vicious creatures that only act slow and docile to trick us into a sense of security. They are just biding their time until they finish building underground tunnels to all parts of the American continent and unleash their coordinated attack. With the assistance of Koala Suicide Teams and the guidance of a Mad Panda General, of course.

  The part that pushes him over the edge is an animated sequence of humans walking through a jungle. They come across a slow-moving sloth. They take pictures and laugh. The sloth becomes almost invisible, running and jumping back and forth from one side of the couple to the other and ends up hanging from a draped vine above them. There’s a pause, then the people unravel into chunks and ribbons of organs, flesh, and blood. The sloth empties its bowels down onto the pile of viscera, drops to the jungle floor, and crawls off. Huge, wavy red block letters fill the screen: THIS COULD BE YOU

  Felix’s laughing wakes up the passed out guy. He groggily looks around then glares at Felix. The guy gets up and leaves and Felix watches him walk languidly through the home/free area.

  He goes back to watching the screen. After a short time, he notices someone approaching the couch in his peripheral vision. He looks and sees the former neighbor girl is trying to look casual while making a beeline from his left for the open seat.

  Shit, how do I let her down lightly? I guess honesty is the best–

  Before the neighbor girl can make it to the couch, someone beats her to it. An odd looking young woman hops over the back of the couch from behind Felix and flops down into the seat.

  The neighbor girl starts to protest but the odd girl casually flicks her hand at her a few times in a “shoo” gesture.

  The neighbor persists, “Hey, I was–”

  “Bzzzzzzzz!” the odd girl says and shoos the girl away again. The neighbor looks at Felix and he shrugs, genuinely surprised and confused himself. Defeated, she waves awkwardly and hurries off.

  “Oh, don’t cry, Nancy!” The odd girl taunts mockingly over her shoulder as the neighbor escapes. From the tone of it, he’s pretty sure that they don’t know each other and that’s not the neighbor’s name.

  Felix fancies himself to be pretty versed on subcultures even while avoiding aligning too much with any one of them. He’s never been interested in wearing a uniform, fun as some can be. But he has no idea how to peg this girl’s style down other than maybe under the general umbrella of dark and weird–like, if Macy’s had a Thrift Store Homeless Crusty Goth Tribal Warrior section, she’d be the poster and junk mail ad girl.

  The first thing that strikes him is her hair. On the front half of her head on back to just behind her ears and around the base of her skull it’s maybe a quarter-inch long and dyed nuclear green but peppered with dark, multi-colored dye spots and stamped dye circles. The green is bright enough that he can clearly make it out, even with ambient flickering from the sloth film being thrown on the wall and the dozens of projected videos on the warehouse ceiling the only light sources. Then–almost like the queue hairstyle of the Manchus in China’s Qing Dynasty or maybe a Shawnee warrior–the bulk of her hair is past this on the back. It’s a stringy mane of dark blue hair interlaced with thin, wispy dreadlocks dyed black and rainbow speckled with bright dyes–and all of that is separated into two thick, loose braids.

  She’s wearing big mirrored sunglasses but what he can see of her face is promising. Her painted lips are mostly black but where they meet under her pierced nose, there’s a white vertical stripe on them. Two thin chains run from one of her many earrings to a nose ring. The lower chain runs through a string of beads that look like translucent human teeth.

  She also wears black knee-high combat boots with intricate leatherwork cut and layered into the calves. A storm of multi-colored fluorescent cartoon atom bombs falls down her lower legs. Atop and tucked into the boots, she wears puffy jodhpurs made of a dark but shiny, smooth purplish fabric with a swirling, almost iridescent print. Partially covering the top of those is a fastened black threadbare pea coat, its sleeves ending at the start of thin black gloves with glow-in-the-dark skeletal hand bones.

  Even what serves her as a purse is a little odd. A worn canvas grocery bag with photos of pastel marshmallows printed on all sides.

  She rifles through the bag and pulls out a metallic cobalt blue zippo, grips it between her thumb and middle and index fingers and pops the top open, lights it with a snap and pulls a half-finished smoke from her left ear where Felix can’t see or somewhere in her crazy hair. Her smoke is like a thick beedi but the leaf around it is vibrant crimson and instead of a cheap little string near the business end, there’s a thin weave of silky thread and a tiny symbol woven into it Felix can’t make out.

  The young woman lights her smoke then slowly and deliberately closes the zippo as she takes a deep pull and holds it for a moment. She moans in an almost obscene manner as she exhales out through her nose and mouth.

  Watching her enjoy her weird beedi so much is like torture to Felix. I need to get an electronic cigarette or nicotine inhaler or whatever you call them. Felix has been really curious about those but Audrey’s big on cold turkey.

  The odd young woman looks over at Felix and, after a quick glimpse of himself in the t
wo big mirrors on her face, he winces and looks away. He pretends to be interested in the screen while she rummages through her bag some more.

  “Some people are just rude, you know?” she says.

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, you tell a person to fuck off and they just look at you like ‘uh…’. I think I’m pretty good at it but shit… they don’t get it. Fucking sheep.” She glances at Felix. “You’re cool. A bit of a staring problem but I can live with that.” She takes another drag and exhales the thick smoke as she stubs the beedi or whatever it is out again on her boot heel. She tucks it back where it came from then digs back into her bag.

  Felix says, “Sorry. Your style is a bit… unique.”

  “Maybe I’m just ahead of my time,” she says, chuckling. “Anyway, it’s like you could tell most people ‘there are bombs falling from the sky! Get the fuck out of Dodge! The end is extremely fucking nigh!’ They’d just look at you. ‘But The Simpsons is on.’ Do people still watch that? I’ve been out of town for a while. Anyway, you get my point.”

  “Actually… yeah, they do,” Felix says.

  She chuckles again and takes off her sunglasses.

  Damn. She is stunning.

  He’s struck by how much her large, lovely eyes bring her devil may care hodgepodge of a look together. There is something odd about them too, though. He can’t tell what color they are because she’s wearing some sort of specialty contact lenses. They are reflective but also translucent. It’s an unnerving but alluring effect. Not like the b-movie monster style contacts some goths and rivetheads wear. These look like expensive, custom kit.

  Felix is having trouble guessing at her ethnicity.

  Maybe Anglo and… Asian descent?

  “Oh wow, I love your eyes,” she says.

  Felix grumbles, “Gee, thanks.”

  “Ooh! You know what would be great right now?” She looks at Felix expectantly. He’s disarmed by her eager familiarity.

  He also notices just a touch of an accent he can’t place, almost like she’s consciously masking it with an “Ameri-can” accent like a British crossover actor.

  “What?”

  “One of those cheeseburgers where the bun is a donut! Holy shit that sounds so good!”

  A few people at different couches and chairs look back at them then go back to watching the screen.

  “Seriously?” Felix asks, embarrassed.

  She frowns at him.

  “What, are you a vegan or something?”

  “No, but–”

  “Never mind. You killed it.” She rummages in her bag some more.

  Felix shakes his head and says, “Do they miss you in the magic forest?”

  Her face lights up and she exclaims, “Ha! Found my diet pill!”

  She pulls a metal object out of her bag that’s like a thick bullet with a button on it. She presses it to one nostril, presses the button, and inhales short and sharp, then repeats on the other. She sees Felix’s raised eyebrows and extends the device toward him.

  “Yayo?” She asks.

  He looks back at the projection and says, “Trying to cut down.” Wouldn’t mind some, though, if I’m being honest with myself.

  She says, “Not original.”

  She sniffs hard and shakes her head, then throws the coke bullet back into her bag.

  “Siobhán,” says the odd girl. It sounds like Shiv-awn, for reference. You’re welcome.

  He makes eye contact again, reluctantly.

  Her eyes are a little hypnotic.

  “That’s me…” She says, then lowers her chin and raises her eyebrows. “And you?”

  “Uh… Felix.”

  She sniffs again and laughs.

  “Adorable. You hot?”

  She unravels a dark scarf almost all the way and lets it hang loosely then pops the top few buttons on her pea coat and opens it some, exposing her chin, neck, upper chest and the top of a dark blue satin slip.

  Felix can see more of her tattoos now.

  Thin, layered clouds of multi-colored cherry and plum blossom petals flow up her sternum from between her breasts and run up her neck on both sides. Not too dense. Just enough skin in between. They’re pink, violet, blue, white, and a bold black which strikes Felix as a bit odd.

  They follow the smooth angled curves from the dip between her clavicles up the sides, the petals becoming less plentiful as they ride the outer V of her neck muscles and disappear into the much shorter hair behind her ears. Some are peppered around the back of her neck as well. Maybe curling up from a back tattoo?

  The thin straps of the slip cut through the upper curves of dark yakuza style round shoulder-to-sleeve tattoos just peeking out from the open pea coat collar. More blossoms are tastefully scattered in and around these.

  The overall effect of just the little he can see is awesome. It really looks like the blossoms flow around her body by gusts of divine wind or something. Felix isn’t always into extensive tattooing but these are expertly done and really beautiful, he admits to himself. Plus, the contrast with her smooth, pale skin is lovely.

  Felix feels a sharp pang of guilt when he realizes he would very much like to see all of her tattoos. He looks back at the screen, now determined to let the conversation end.

  “Hmm… So,” Siobhán shifts her butt, spins, and kicks her booted legs up onto Felix’s lap and leans back against the puffy couch arm. She nestles in, rubbing the boots against his thighs then interlacing her fingers on her chest and crossing her legs.

  Felix is stunned by her lack of social graces or complete disregard for them; even more so by her daring, presumptuous intimacy. He’s never met anyone like this and he feels almost helpless.

  “What’s better, thong or bikini panties?” Siobhán asks.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What, did you burp or something? You’re excused.”

  “No, I–”

  “When you’re walking behind a girl, you know,” she switches to a loud, exaggerated whisper and raises her hand to block her lips, “checking out her ass,” then re-interlaces her fingers and continues in her normal voice, “which do you hope-slash-imagine she’s wearing?”

  “You should cut down on your ‘diet pill.’”

  Felix tries to lift Siobhán’s boots off his lap but she gently yet firmly presses them back down. He stares at the screen and tries to ignore the slight stirring in his pants.

  She narrows her eyes a bit. “You’re not so clever, are you? Hey, if I’m making you uncomfortable, I can stop. You don’t want me to stop, though, do you?”

  “You don’t make any sense. And I think you might actually enjoy making people uncomfortable.”

  “Only if there’s a damn good reason, prickly pear,” Siobhán says.

  “Do you actually share that shit ever or just do whole eight-balls yourself?”

  “Mostly myself, but I asked my question first. Plus, I offered you some, did I not?” She continued, “so, I’m assuming silky or velvety–or even latex-y–’cause you don’t strike me as a boy who gets excited by cotton. All that’s left to establish is cut. I think I have you pegged but I’ve been wrong before. Honest question.”

  “Why do you care?” Felix asks.

  “You can tell a lot about a person by what gets them all hot and bothered.”

  “Can you now?”

  “Certainly. Those naughty, possibly embarrassing little preferences and fetishes that really get you going say a lot. Different for each person, though, other than resulting from imprints of sight, smell, strong emotion and such. There’s an enormous but finite mesh of possible triggers. Biological imperatives guided or confused by details of a formative moment.”

  “What, you’re a shrink or something all of a sudden?”

  She pauses, which seems like it’s probably rare for her. Felix notices that she appears to be watching something moving behind him. He turns and looks in the area she’s watching. In the glow from the ceiling and sloth movie projections, he sees some stacked p
lastic chair, a sealed box of paper towel rolls, and Yevgeny’s folded up ping-pong table against the wall.

  “Then there’s partialism. For instance, you’re obviously a butt man ‘cause you barely glanced at my chest and you can keep eye contact almost effortlessly. You gauged general size and maybe shape and moved on. You took a lot more time trying to figure out what material my silky pants are made of like you were, I don’t know, trying to imagine what it would feel like to palm and squeeze it maybe? Your focus on the material leads me to believe you have at least a mild fascination with girls wearing sexy little undies. Nothing wrong with that. Really common, actually. For your information, it is not a material you’re familiar with and it would feel phenomenal… mutually.”

  She lifts her hands and makes an exaggerated squeezing gesture and opens her eyes real wide for a moment then relaxes them.

  “So, you gonna ask me what kind of unmentionables I have on or you just want to get lost with me so I can show you?”

  She winks and smiles seductively then licks her left upper canine gently. Her boots slowly, rhythmically rub against his thighs.

  Felix is really turned on and hating himself for it. He panics.

  “My girlfriend might not–”

  “Wait, girlfriend?” She drops her hands to her chest. The mischievous gleam leaves her eyes for the first time and is replaced by a hollow stare. It’s like she’s looking through him. It’s unsettling; almost eerie. Then she studies his face and focuses on his blue eye. “My-my, aren’t you just a cruel joke…”

  “What?”

  “I guess after long enough things do start to come back around… or maybe I finally burnt my brain with all those lovely drugs.”

  Siobhán closes her eyes and sighs deeply then opens them and the gleam mostly returns. She smiles again but seems different. She looks exhausted now.

  “If you have to, think of it as a survey question. I’m just doing a ‘cute guy on the street’ survey on how you like your presents wrapped.”

  “He likes his presents wrapped and given by me, slag,” Audrey says in a cold tone from behind the couch. Felix all but jumps in his seat but Siobhán looks unfazed. Pleasantly amused, actually.