Pinkerton
[Kase and Mei]
[Part II of II of the Pizza Delivery Chronicles]
it was a perfume with extinct ingredients.
it was a 2009 vintage bordeaux that did not exist.
it was a silk dress in brocade that was no longer produced.
it was a pair of heels that the government might well seek to censor.
it was a ledger book of dirty money in a dirty lap, full of dirty foreign letters, in a penthouse apartment in a part of town that was as well known for smelling of rotten meat as it was for the stench of blood and sex.
it was late.
she was tired-- and that was reason enough for the day's decadence.
that was reason enough to lay out in her own sense of glory, just working,
in her own sort of silence,
if it wasn’t for the
constant
ring
of
the
doorbell.
Buzzing,
then
the
door
Knocking,
and
a
“ma’am!”
screeching from behind the door. a purely male voice, a boy voice, teenage cracked with second-hand smoke.
“ma’am!”
mei often forgot she had a doorbell.
and so, she supposed it was the police. the outdated revolver on the coffee table kept its place.
really, there was no reason to make such a racket. or to open the door.
but she did it anyway, staring down whoever had the misfortune of ringing that dusty doorbell.
just a lowly pizza boy.
he had red hair that was a mess under a newsboy cap, his green eyes wide as he held the pizza in front of him. another finger up, pointing to it.
“uh, pizza ma’am. extra cheese, like ya said ya liked?”
his trigger-finger shifted, pointing to the reciept. the address perfect correct, name missing.
that address that no one was really supposed to know, and that name that, thank god, stayed as hidden as she liked.
with that backglanced,
halfsmiled
sort
of
soft initiation,
that hand was taken.
and held.
and puzzled over, like a fossil
or an antique wristwatch
"yes, of course."
she gagged a little, at the thought of the typical amount of cheese on any given pizza being increased. it was disgusting enough as it was.
"come in?"
she stared, lost and curious- already a killed cat.
his metal fingers wiggled.
“uh, yeah, sure ma’am. that’ll be ten-fifty tho, on special. the pizza. yeah....”
his nametag on his shirt was crooked (kase it said), just like the rest of him. pants ragged and worn in, brown cords over his purple chucks, a collared pizza shirt that merely said,
black fox pizza.
he left his bike outside, as he slid, inside, following her.
where she went off to was that
too pretty coffee table-
it should have been burned down years ago, ivory insect insets scrapped.
the revolver lounged between a stack of folded bills, and a little pile of powder.
she handed him, lingering a moment, two hundred dollar bills, took the pizza, and whirled away to the small kitchen. it was trashed.
"talk," she had requested, on her way.
“this is too fuckin’ much...” was the first thing out of his mouth, but his frown turned into a little smirk and he jammed it into his wallet, pulling out the right ten dollar bill from his stash and traded it.
“talk? uh, i really ain’t got shit to say. i’m just, devlierin’ pizzas?” kase’s voice cracked with it again, as he slouched into himself, lizard spine prodding out. “you were mah last order so i dunno, was gonna go walk tha’ fuck ‘round...”
he trailed, again, eyes flickering around the home.
“ya know, tha usual...”
and oh, what a home it was.
they say a woman defined her space
and a space defined it's woman.
there were trinkets- carved and molded, porcelain, bronze, lacquer, cloissonne, all unfamiliar to the standardized eye and all well loved.
there was plush furniture,
rich upholstery,
all the comforts she sought to deny herself the most.
there was dust in the corners
cobwebs reaching for the ceiling.
a museum and a den of debauchery, all overseen by a benevolently mad curator.
a scowl lit up her too-soft features,
a look of dissappointment
"watch your language. sit down, have some wine if you don't mind a dirty glass," she gestured to a lipstickstain blownglass vessel, "tell me- how do you know this place?"
“someone called fer’a’pizza...” kase shrugged, sitting down. his tastebuds not developed enough for good wine. only when it was drunk out of the bottle in the back of someone’s car,
his legs thrown around their waist.
“and i deliva tha pizza, cuz thats muh job.”
two legs, exposed and always fit to be pictured around anyone's waist, crossed as the stranger sat down on the sofa beside the unfortunate delivery boy.
"i don't think i've heard you lie yet," she smiled, and reached for the glass.
"it's charming."
black eyes, potent and misleading,
drifted back to that hand.
that museum piece of a hand.
“ain’t really got a reason ta’ lie ma’am.” kase offered his small woflish smile, the edges raised on his sunken cheeks. “s’pecially when it ain’t gonna bring me anythin’.”
and he could see her eyes,
because it was something that always happened.
“it’s real.”
he said, offhandedly.
"oh, i know," she came quick. "i love it."
after her own organic mess of fingers reached for the gun, admiring it like the artwork it was, she sat back,
langorous,
wine glass in one hand,
revolver in the other.
"i think of these things too often. it's difficult not to, don't you think? all the water in the world can't bring a flood to change a thing."
“uh, yeh, sure.” kase shrugged, nose twitching,
in low-level understanding,
con
fus
ion.
“ain’t much ta’ love. it’s a hand...” he brought it up, dimlight shining off it it. it was three-fourths metal all the way down. it was a pinky, a ring and one-half of a middle finger, turning with age. “it don’t really fu--er, werk right an’all. can’t feel.”
he slapped it with his other hand, as if to prove a point.
point proven-
if there ever
even was one.
"form over function, they say. fact over feeling, they say."
she took it, singlehandedly,
glass left for the guest
"i think it all matters more than it should. do you want to be here right now?"
here on this earth.
here in this heavy head.
“in yer apartment?” he questioned but she gave no sort of response. not quick enough, so he shrugged. “there’s a few places i’ve been ta’ recently i’d like ta’ go back.”
(arms and legs he thought, but didn’t speak.
no no,
kase never spoke
the stupid things he thought that ran through his head.
the feel of green fucking winter)
“but, uh...here ain’t bad.”
she moved.
she moved.
the way she moved:
coltish, coy,
curling onto the carpet
in front of the boy's knees.
that ten ton head rested there, tired and drunk and leaking words.
"how can i know where you are right now? i'm not you."
she settled, she said it, sadly and sweetly.
“Uh...”
kase stalled for a moment, a mere moment though. his lower lip slid up under his teeth and he paused,
breathed.
there were things he liked:
soft chests and hips
slanted eyes
fine, fine hair.
fucking asian girls. women.
he shook his head.
“dunno really how to ‘spain.” he shrugged, his shoulders changing direction and leaned foward, perfectly angled chin pointing down to her. “but right now? guess i’m ‘ere with ya...”
she smiled a little, soft face on those pizzaboy pants that frightened her so.
as though the mundane
might just pull her in.
"you know, you made me remember i had a doorbell and a voice. my memory isn't good for these things- so i suppose i do need other people, to remind me."
kase just laughed.
and it sounded the way it seemed it would, clouded and hazed.
“ah, yeah...sometimes ya do...” he went along with it, and the feelingless hand grazed through her hair,
oh so
oh so
oh so
slow.
fading down the curve of her face, body laxing. there would always be something about him and his silly accent and the way he could
fake
a
feeling.
“i guess, i can help.”
oh, help me
do something
do anything
and the funniest thing, the funniest thing there was--
that well matched propensity for
little white lies,
scrawled in scandals,
sidewalkchalk innocent
upward glances
grasps for balance
satisfied sighs.
it was an art without paint or ink or words.
it was an art of contaminated gestures.
"are you good at tying knots?"
“i can’t say I am...” kase responded, hand ending it’s line just in front of her line of sight.
the metal&skin fusion,
rotted silver and pinkmilk white.
“i can barely tie mah shoes. why?”
that hand was taken and used as leverage for a stretch up/sit down against the turntable scale of the nameless boy's spine.
she rested, there
placated with pithy answers.
"lynchings," she told him, perched in his lap. "lynchings and tin can car tassels. i was curious, and that's not all knots are good for."
“hrm?” kase’s grin grew. it was all sharp teeth, each one crooked.
metal for his hand
but never for his mouth.
“do tell? there’s a lotta shit i ain’t know...”
her voice was dreary, an auditory obituary in phonesex form.
"jewelry. sailboats. circuity. hairdressing. shoelaces, as you said- corset laces. bookbinding. arms and legs and limbs and lips," a step was skipped.
"locks. if you have no knots you must have locks. can you pick them?"
“yeh!” kase’s own voice hit a highnote,
something he could do
and something he could do well.
“i used ta’ have’ta pick locks ta’ get into mah own house, when my ma would kick me out.”
if that recollection wasn't adorable, nothing was.
"i never could- i was always locked in and all i had was hairpins. do you think it's harder to pick locks from the inside out?"
“yeh...” kase nodded slowly. as everyting seemed to turn. “i’d guess but i’ve neva been locked in anywhere. just locked out.” and his smile stayed, and his voice didn’t change,
even when his next words could cut his throat.
“people always tryin’ to get ridda me. ain’t eva met anyone lockin’ me in. stay a bit and when i go, change tha locks an’i can’t get back in.”
he turned his palm up and looked to the lady.
“ma’am...i really need’ta’ go...”
there was a little laugh, and a little fall from lap to couch, and a little too much buzz in her blood to be offended.
"when you come back, give me a reason to change my locks."
i'm
begging
you
kase stood and nodded at her. he fixed his cap and fixed his shirt. left his nametag crooked still.
“yeh lady. dun worry. i will.”
all before he left .
[Part II of II of the Pizza Delivery Chronicles]
it was a perfume with extinct ingredients.
it was a 2009 vintage bordeaux that did not exist.
it was a silk dress in brocade that was no longer produced.
it was a pair of heels that the government might well seek to censor.
it was a ledger book of dirty money in a dirty lap, full of dirty foreign letters, in a penthouse apartment in a part of town that was as well known for smelling of rotten meat as it was for the stench of blood and sex.
it was late.
she was tired-- and that was reason enough for the day's decadence.
that was reason enough to lay out in her own sense of glory, just working,
in her own sort of silence,
if it wasn’t for the
constant
ring
of
the
doorbell.
Buzzing,
then
the
door
Knocking,
and
a
“ma’am!”
screeching from behind the door. a purely male voice, a boy voice, teenage cracked with second-hand smoke.
“ma’am!”
mei often forgot she had a doorbell.
and so, she supposed it was the police. the outdated revolver on the coffee table kept its place.
really, there was no reason to make such a racket. or to open the door.
but she did it anyway, staring down whoever had the misfortune of ringing that dusty doorbell.
just a lowly pizza boy.
he had red hair that was a mess under a newsboy cap, his green eyes wide as he held the pizza in front of him. another finger up, pointing to it.
“uh, pizza ma’am. extra cheese, like ya said ya liked?”
his trigger-finger shifted, pointing to the reciept. the address perfect correct, name missing.
that address that no one was really supposed to know, and that name that, thank god, stayed as hidden as she liked.
with that backglanced,
halfsmiled
sort
of
soft initiation,
that hand was taken.
and held.
and puzzled over, like a fossil
or an antique wristwatch
"yes, of course."
she gagged a little, at the thought of the typical amount of cheese on any given pizza being increased. it was disgusting enough as it was.
"come in?"
she stared, lost and curious- already a killed cat.
his metal fingers wiggled.
“uh, yeah, sure ma’am. that’ll be ten-fifty tho, on special. the pizza. yeah....”
his nametag on his shirt was crooked (kase it said), just like the rest of him. pants ragged and worn in, brown cords over his purple chucks, a collared pizza shirt that merely said,
black fox pizza.
he left his bike outside, as he slid, inside, following her.
where she went off to was that
too pretty coffee table-
it should have been burned down years ago, ivory insect insets scrapped.
the revolver lounged between a stack of folded bills, and a little pile of powder.
she handed him, lingering a moment, two hundred dollar bills, took the pizza, and whirled away to the small kitchen. it was trashed.
"talk," she had requested, on her way.
“this is too fuckin’ much...” was the first thing out of his mouth, but his frown turned into a little smirk and he jammed it into his wallet, pulling out the right ten dollar bill from his stash and traded it.
“talk? uh, i really ain’t got shit to say. i’m just, devlierin’ pizzas?” kase’s voice cracked with it again, as he slouched into himself, lizard spine prodding out. “you were mah last order so i dunno, was gonna go walk tha’ fuck ‘round...”
he trailed, again, eyes flickering around the home.
“ya know, tha usual...”
and oh, what a home it was.
they say a woman defined her space
and a space defined it's woman.
there were trinkets- carved and molded, porcelain, bronze, lacquer, cloissonne, all unfamiliar to the standardized eye and all well loved.
there was plush furniture,
rich upholstery,
all the comforts she sought to deny herself the most.
there was dust in the corners
cobwebs reaching for the ceiling.
a museum and a den of debauchery, all overseen by a benevolently mad curator.
a scowl lit up her too-soft features,
a look of dissappointment
"watch your language. sit down, have some wine if you don't mind a dirty glass," she gestured to a lipstickstain blownglass vessel, "tell me- how do you know this place?"
“someone called fer’a’pizza...” kase shrugged, sitting down. his tastebuds not developed enough for good wine. only when it was drunk out of the bottle in the back of someone’s car,
his legs thrown around their waist.
“and i deliva tha pizza, cuz thats muh job.”
two legs, exposed and always fit to be pictured around anyone's waist, crossed as the stranger sat down on the sofa beside the unfortunate delivery boy.
"i don't think i've heard you lie yet," she smiled, and reached for the glass.
"it's charming."
black eyes, potent and misleading,
drifted back to that hand.
that museum piece of a hand.
“ain’t really got a reason ta’ lie ma’am.” kase offered his small woflish smile, the edges raised on his sunken cheeks. “s’pecially when it ain’t gonna bring me anythin’.”
and he could see her eyes,
because it was something that always happened.
“it’s real.”
he said, offhandedly.
"oh, i know," she came quick. "i love it."
after her own organic mess of fingers reached for the gun, admiring it like the artwork it was, she sat back,
langorous,
wine glass in one hand,
revolver in the other.
"i think of these things too often. it's difficult not to, don't you think? all the water in the world can't bring a flood to change a thing."
“uh, yeh, sure.” kase shrugged, nose twitching,
in low-level understanding,
con
fus
ion.
“ain’t much ta’ love. it’s a hand...” he brought it up, dimlight shining off it it. it was three-fourths metal all the way down. it was a pinky, a ring and one-half of a middle finger, turning with age. “it don’t really fu--er, werk right an’all. can’t feel.”
he slapped it with his other hand, as if to prove a point.
point proven-
if there ever
even was one.
"form over function, they say. fact over feeling, they say."
she took it, singlehandedly,
glass left for the guest
"i think it all matters more than it should. do you want to be here right now?"
here on this earth.
here in this heavy head.
“in yer apartment?” he questioned but she gave no sort of response. not quick enough, so he shrugged. “there’s a few places i’ve been ta’ recently i’d like ta’ go back.”
(arms and legs he thought, but didn’t speak.
no no,
kase never spoke
the stupid things he thought that ran through his head.
the feel of green fucking winter)
“but, uh...here ain’t bad.”
she moved.
she moved.
the way she moved:
coltish, coy,
curling onto the carpet
in front of the boy's knees.
that ten ton head rested there, tired and drunk and leaking words.
"how can i know where you are right now? i'm not you."
she settled, she said it, sadly and sweetly.
“Uh...”
kase stalled for a moment, a mere moment though. his lower lip slid up under his teeth and he paused,
breathed.
there were things he liked:
soft chests and hips
slanted eyes
fine, fine hair.
fucking asian girls. women.
he shook his head.
“dunno really how to ‘spain.” he shrugged, his shoulders changing direction and leaned foward, perfectly angled chin pointing down to her. “but right now? guess i’m ‘ere with ya...”
she smiled a little, soft face on those pizzaboy pants that frightened her so.
as though the mundane
might just pull her in.
"you know, you made me remember i had a doorbell and a voice. my memory isn't good for these things- so i suppose i do need other people, to remind me."
kase just laughed.
and it sounded the way it seemed it would, clouded and hazed.
“ah, yeah...sometimes ya do...” he went along with it, and the feelingless hand grazed through her hair,
oh so
oh so
oh so
slow.
fading down the curve of her face, body laxing. there would always be something about him and his silly accent and the way he could
fake
a
feeling.
“i guess, i can help.”
oh, help me
do something
do anything
and the funniest thing, the funniest thing there was--
that well matched propensity for
little white lies,
scrawled in scandals,
sidewalkchalk innocent
upward glances
grasps for balance
satisfied sighs.
it was an art without paint or ink or words.
it was an art of contaminated gestures.
"are you good at tying knots?"
“i can’t say I am...” kase responded, hand ending it’s line just in front of her line of sight.
the metal&skin fusion,
rotted silver and pinkmilk white.
“i can barely tie mah shoes. why?”
that hand was taken and used as leverage for a stretch up/sit down against the turntable scale of the nameless boy's spine.
she rested, there
placated with pithy answers.
"lynchings," she told him, perched in his lap. "lynchings and tin can car tassels. i was curious, and that's not all knots are good for."
“hrm?” kase’s grin grew. it was all sharp teeth, each one crooked.
metal for his hand
but never for his mouth.
“do tell? there’s a lotta shit i ain’t know...”
her voice was dreary, an auditory obituary in phonesex form.
"jewelry. sailboats. circuity. hairdressing. shoelaces, as you said- corset laces. bookbinding. arms and legs and limbs and lips," a step was skipped.
"locks. if you have no knots you must have locks. can you pick them?"
“yeh!” kase’s own voice hit a highnote,
something he could do
and something he could do well.
“i used ta’ have’ta pick locks ta’ get into mah own house, when my ma would kick me out.”
if that recollection wasn't adorable, nothing was.
"i never could- i was always locked in and all i had was hairpins. do you think it's harder to pick locks from the inside out?"
“yeh...” kase nodded slowly. as everyting seemed to turn. “i’d guess but i’ve neva been locked in anywhere. just locked out.” and his smile stayed, and his voice didn’t change,
even when his next words could cut his throat.
“people always tryin’ to get ridda me. ain’t eva met anyone lockin’ me in. stay a bit and when i go, change tha locks an’i can’t get back in.”
he turned his palm up and looked to the lady.
“ma’am...i really need’ta’ go...”
there was a little laugh, and a little fall from lap to couch, and a little too much buzz in her blood to be offended.
"when you come back, give me a reason to change my locks."
i'm
begging
you
kase stood and nodded at her. he fixed his cap and fixed his shirt. left his nametag crooked still.
“yeh lady. dun worry. i will.”
all before he left .