THE LADY WHO GETS SAWED IN HALF
The steel blade skies above west LA press down on Black's dented rice rocket. I stare at the naked blonde Barbie sitting on the dashboard. I stare at the line that splits her torso. She does a back-flip when he stops in front of an unmarked building. His trembling hand doesn't impress me much.
"What's with the Barbie?"
He slams the car door. The plastic lady is face down on the grimy floorboard. Fuck you, Barbie, it's show time.
Black and I wait in a green room. He eats popcorn from a red and white striped bag. His face looks torn, somehow, half a face. The dog-man. No more handsome man. Jerry Springer splatters from the TV chained to the wall. Yes carny boy, I whisper, This is sad, you are sad, we are sad.
I spell my name for an assistant who is laying silver tools on a silver tray. She nods to a pen and paper on a chipped clipboard. I write my name in blue twirls, magical high wire loops. There is a paper wrapper to wear and instructions: the opening goes to the back. Of course, the ass of the sinner is always out.
I crinkle onto a bench and disappear into a wad of blue. The assistant hands me a pleated cup with a glossy pill. I know Black's hand is in the bag, searching for a vowel. He is out of words. I wonder if he will be there when I reappear.
East Side to West Side... Dark to light. Black mounted my steps every night, his body shimmering with alcohol, "I love you, let me in, I love you, let me in." I let him in. I believed in love. I believed what I saw.
Even though I knew that behind the black velvet curtain there waited a proper fiance, and a man-boy who lived with his parents, parents who only spoke in Korean... parents who believed in their poet, parents who asked, "Who is that white woman?" when I left a message on their answering machine.
In a piss gold Cafe Black read to a packed house from a book of poems that he named, "Vicki," while I doodled on butcher-paper with a Crayon. I drew rounded fish-shaped eyes and slivered moon shaped eyes.
In bed, I told him that I couldn't take his Houdini act anymore. That the words he had used to pave my escape from my life couldn't help me anymore.
"Do I have to tell my fiance about you if I want to see you again?"
"Yes."
"Do I have to tell my parents?"
"Yes."
"Do you want me to leave now?"
I stared at the ceiling until it dissolved.
The next morning, following the instructions on the box, I placed two doves in a cage then lowered them, for only a moment, into a hollow square frame and immediately lifted the cage out. The doves were gone and in their place was a large white rabbit. At the count of ten, a red stripe appeared across its back.
At the piss gold cafe, all eyes were on Black as he performed. I watched him drape silk scarf poems about impossibility, about the wrong shape of things, over their ears. The crowd loves him. His inscrutable eyes, his glossy hair, shine with his brilliant future.
My Crayon broke with a shattering only I could hear. His poems were not about me at all. They were about his life. The magic of his world. The magic of him. They were never about me.
The assistant sticks the flesh on the top of my hand with an IV needle then pulls it out. My eyes sting.
"Sorry lady, tired, so many today..." she moans. She slices into me, misses, and jabs again. "Sorry lady."
A Dr. makes an entrance. White mask over Korean face. My heart pumps too much blood to my stomach. The assistant places more tools on the silver tray.
"Relax," he says. "Stop with the tools!" he says to her. He clears his throat... "Today, I will cut you into three pieces then I will open the curtain so that everyone can see that your legs, torso and head are all separated."
"Dr.," I whisper, "do you know which one of us you are supposed to kill today? The dog-boy in the waiting room... did you see him?"
"You love him."
"I loved him."
The Dr. blinks pitch-black, and breathes garlic, in and out. I see my reflection in his bifocals. The curtains chatter along the slick rod that circles us. There is the smell of alcohol and hard things. It echoes the click of metal.
"Everything was wrong...that is what I loved... the impossibility."
The assistant fiddles with knobs on a machine behind my head, anesthesia burns its burn through the top of my bruised hand and up my arm... it walks across my chest and sits. The Dr. waves a tool and takes a bow. He is the one in command, this is his magic show and I am the lovely lady he will saw in half today; the lady who cannot take care of a baby on her own; the lady who cannot survive a poet who cannot love her.
The Dr.'s hand is on my arm, cold as a diamond. A switch trips a machine that hums. The operating rooms lights come up--three high-powered torches become one-the velvet curtains drop. And for a moment, I try to form the words, one word in front of the other... I want to ask him, "Do Black and I still have time to take the baby and run?"
VICKI WHICKER