Maggie
stands slouched in her usual spot among the vending machines, between a soda
machine and a machine filled with dry snacks. She has eaten Cheetos, sucking
orange dust off her fingers. She’s heard they have better vending machines in Japan,
machines that offer things like breakfast and beer. She could go for both this
morning.
She stands with the machines behind the
grubby little motel on Rush Street, a hard-won territory and she’ll cut any
bitch who tries to encroach on her claim. It is prime real state there on Rush
Street and she won’t give it up without a fight.
Maggie had been born with a face like an
octopus; her bulging black eyes almost on the sides of her pale, bulbous head;
a long mustache of tentacles hanging over her mouth-sphincters. She shows off
her shapely legs in a short leather skirt. She is waiting for a john to
approach. She caters to the blue collar men in the factories who need a quickie
before they punch into their dismal jobs. The men are desperate, frantic. They
have rough, dirty, calloused hands. She doesn’t hate them yet but she’s getting
close.
Maggie thinks about buying a soda and then
dismisses the idea. Carbonated beverages give her gas. Besides, the sun is coming
up. Time to go to work.
Her heart has lost its luster. It has
erased any empathy she may have once felt for herself. She hasn’t felt self-pity
in years. She misses the way she used to feel sorry for herself. Now she
thinks, Well, life is hard.
A man approaches her with strange
delicacy, as if trying to sneak up on her. He is not one of her regulars. He’s
a middle-aged man with a gray beard and a stupid hat. She knows the type. He is
probably married and figures going to a prostitute doesn’t constitute cheating.
She says, “You looking for action?” Her voice is muffled behind the tentacles.
The tentacles are sleek and muscled and move with her words.
He nods and says, “How much?”
She lays out her prices and he makes a
thoughtful face, listening. Finally he says, “Blowjob,” and looks around
nervously, as if the word had been broadcast by loudspeaker.
His skittish behavior is phony, she
thinks. Some men have to act intimidated to soften the awkward situation. They
act anxious because of her octopus face. She is already bored by the man. He
hands her the money and she says, “Follow me,” and leads him into her motel
room. She doesn’t turn on the light.
They stand in the gloomy paneled room and
look at each other. His expression betrays no shock as she removes her top,
revealing four small breasts.
“Okay,” she says. “Take it out.” And she
drops to her knees.
What he shows her she’s never seen before.
He has a corkscrew penis, like a pig, and three testicles.
She doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Come on,” he says, slight aggravation in
his tone. “Do it.”
She leans back and looks up at him. “Look
mister, I don’t know about this...” Her voice is tentative for the first time
in years.
“Don’t be afraid. Just treat it normally,”
he tells her.
And
so she does and with the intimate contact she feels herself floating outside
her body and she drifts toward the ceiling on soft, undulating cushions of air.
She feels free. The ceiling grows and expands, breaking apart into atoms of
light. And there is a beyond, she realizes for the first time.
He moans and she looks down and when he
finishes she crashes back into her body.
There was a shift from present tense to
past and it seemed to happen instantaneously, in an eyelash of time. He zipped
up and said, “Thanks,” and left her alone in the room and she wept, finally
feeling sorry for herself again.
She allowed herself to cry for ten or
fifteen minutes, and then went into the bathroom to puke and rinse with
Listerine.
