Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Page A
Authors: Katherine Dunn
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Sagas, Family, Domestic Fiction, Monsters, Families, Carnival Owners, Circus Performers, Freak Shows
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going in before one comes out. None of them is Miss Lick.
The cold wraps me. It isn't real rain, just the heavy mist that takes its time soaking through. The clouds hang low, picking up a dull bruise color from the lights of the city. The flesh-toned office tower known as Big Pink haunts the sky above the crabbed three-story horizon of Old Town. The tower disappears occasionally in a gust of darkness. My legs begin to ache.
Who do I think I am? What in the name of creeping Jesus am I going to do? The only answer is the sneer from the region of my hip sockets. I go on sitting, watching, feeling like a rats-ass fool.
Two hours later Miss Lick shows up. She's easy to pick out. Six foot two and 240 pounds in a grey business suit. Her high heels are each big enough to bury an Egyptian in. She trots alone across the parking lot, hunched under an umbrella, and slides into the side door of the Glass House. My pulse whips high at the sight of her but drifts back down to a rhythmless funk as the door stays closed.
It's another hour before she steps out into the harsh light of the parking lot. She looks up and decides against opening the umbrella. She lets the door sink back behind her and stands, head up, mouth open, fumbling in her pockets. I get up. My knees are stiff and unreliable. I shake my feet trying to get some juice into my joints. The blood begins its burn back to life as she starts her march across the lot. She is too discreet to leave her car that close to the place. She's on the corner, turning. I trot down the dark side of the street. A small bar is evicting scum, and the drunken banter covers my shuffle briefly. Three blocks from the Glass House the big woman climbs into a sleek, dark machine parked in front of the blood bank. I write the license number on my wrist with a felt-tip pen and feel as though I've conquered Asia.
Miranda won't get off work for another two hours. She'll take a cab home. I stump over to the bus mall, so delirious with relief and cold that I hallucinate Miranda on every corner. Sitting by the glare-blackened window on the Number 17, I rewrite the license number on an old receipt from my purse. The figures on my wrist are already smearing blue from the mist and my sweat.
I go in to work early the next morning. As I climb onto the bus, a small genderless child lurches in its mother's arms, pointing at me and crowing, “Little Mama!” The woman holding the child goes a sudden hot red and grabs at the tiny hand, shushing. I turn and hop back down the steps and wave the driver on. I walk to the radio station.
By the time I get there I've decided that the license number has nothing to do with Miranda's Miss Lick. How many big women use the side door of the Glass House? I could be tagging lumpily after a convincing middle-aged transvestite. If Lick is a phony name for subterranean use, I could trail an irrelevant specimen for weeks and never know it.
I slide a license trace request into the newsroom, make two fifteen-second commercial spots for Stereo Heaven and Sun River lunchmeat, and then tape the third installment of Beowulf for the Blind. I wait until after the Story Hour to check my message slot, and find the computer printout of the trace. It is Mary T. Lick. She hasn't changed her name for the Glass House. Her address is a tony high-rise condo in the West Hills, just below the Rose Garden.
In the elevator it occurs to me that Miranda might be waiting for me in the lobby, hoping to guile me into another drawing session. I hold my breath as the doors open, but she isn't there.
I cross the bridge over the concrete river of the sunken highway and walk down to the library. Lincoln High School is directly behind the station and the students on their lunch hour crowd the sidewalks. Two shrill-voiced girls argue hideously on the Charles Dickens bench outside the library. I swim through the heavy doors and up the curving white marble stairs to the index files.
Mary T. Lick has a card of
The cold wraps me. It isn't real rain, just the heavy mist that takes its time soaking through. The clouds hang low, picking up a dull bruise color from the lights of the city. The flesh-toned office tower known as Big Pink haunts the sky above the crabbed three-story horizon of Old Town. The tower disappears occasionally in a gust of darkness. My legs begin to ache.
Who do I think I am? What in the name of creeping Jesus am I going to do? The only answer is the sneer from the region of my hip sockets. I go on sitting, watching, feeling like a rats-ass fool.
Two hours later Miss Lick shows up. She's easy to pick out. Six foot two and 240 pounds in a grey business suit. Her high heels are each big enough to bury an Egyptian in. She trots alone across the parking lot, hunched under an umbrella, and slides into the side door of the Glass House. My pulse whips high at the sight of her but drifts back down to a rhythmless funk as the door stays closed.
It's another hour before she steps out into the harsh light of the parking lot. She looks up and decides against opening the umbrella. She lets the door sink back behind her and stands, head up, mouth open, fumbling in her pockets. I get up. My knees are stiff and unreliable. I shake my feet trying to get some juice into my joints. The blood begins its burn back to life as she starts her march across the lot. She is too discreet to leave her car that close to the place. She's on the corner, turning. I trot down the dark side of the street. A small bar is evicting scum, and the drunken banter covers my shuffle briefly. Three blocks from the Glass House the big woman climbs into a sleek, dark machine parked in front of the blood bank. I write the license number on my wrist with a felt-tip pen and feel as though I've conquered Asia.
Miranda won't get off work for another two hours. She'll take a cab home. I stump over to the bus mall, so delirious with relief and cold that I hallucinate Miranda on every corner. Sitting by the glare-blackened window on the Number 17, I rewrite the license number on an old receipt from my purse. The figures on my wrist are already smearing blue from the mist and my sweat.
I go in to work early the next morning. As I climb onto the bus, a small genderless child lurches in its mother's arms, pointing at me and crowing, “Little Mama!” The woman holding the child goes a sudden hot red and grabs at the tiny hand, shushing. I turn and hop back down the steps and wave the driver on. I walk to the radio station.
By the time I get there I've decided that the license number has nothing to do with Miranda's Miss Lick. How many big women use the side door of the Glass House? I could be tagging lumpily after a convincing middle-aged transvestite. If Lick is a phony name for subterranean use, I could trail an irrelevant specimen for weeks and never know it.
I slide a license trace request into the newsroom, make two fifteen-second commercial spots for Stereo Heaven and Sun River lunchmeat, and then tape the third installment of Beowulf for the Blind. I wait until after the Story Hour to check my message slot, and find the computer printout of the trace. It is Mary T. Lick. She hasn't changed her name for the Glass House. Her address is a tony high-rise condo in the West Hills, just below the Rose Garden.
In the elevator it occurs to me that Miranda might be waiting for me in the lobby, hoping to guile me into another drawing session. I hold my breath as the doors open, but she isn't there.
I cross the bridge over the concrete river of the sunken highway and walk down to the library. Lincoln High School is directly behind the station and the students on their lunch hour crowd the sidewalks. Two shrill-voiced girls argue hideously on the Charles Dickens bench outside the library. I swim through the heavy doors and up the curving white marble stairs to the index files.
Mary T. Lick has a card of
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