Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje [19]
As long as I don’t hurt you or Jaelin she mimics. Then beginning to imitate loons and swimming deeper, her head sliding away from me. Below our heads all the evil dark swimming creatures are waiting to brush us into nightmare into heart attack to suck us under into the darkness into the complications. Her loon laugh. The dull star of white water under each of us. Swimming towards the sound of madness.
See Tom Pickett.
Why?
Cos he, cos Buddy cut him up.
Why Pickett?
Go ask him.
Where’ll I find him?
Don’t know.
Tell me, Cornish.
Try Chinatown. Opium.
Was that why?
No.
Ok I’ll find him.
Then as Webb is almost out of the door, Cornish saying
Listen what he’ll tell you is true. I saw his face afterwards. You won’t believe it but it’s true.
Thanks Willy.
After a day he found Pickett in the room of flies. The air damp and thick. He had to practically sweep the flies off his face and hair.
Don’t kill one you bastard or you’ll be out, in fact get out’f here, willya.
What the fuck is all this. Not the dope but this mess. The flies.
I invite them in, ok? If you don’t like it get out.
Cornish wouldn’t know about this or Cornish would have told him. Cornish would never come here. Webb could hardly breathe without one going in his nose or into his mouth. Early evening and the windows closed, no breeze, just Tom Pickett and open food on plates around the room.
You’re the first to come here since I started. Don’t tell others.
I came to talk about Buddy.
I guessed. That’s what everyone wants to talk about.
Pickett lying on the floor bed while Webb stood over him.
He did this. Pickett clapped his hands near his face so the flies left it for a moment and then settled back. Five or six scars cut into his cheeks. Pickett had been one of the great hustlers, one of the most beautiful men in the District.
Did they try to arrest him, is that why he went?
No.
Why did he go?
Don’t know. I don’t think it was this you see, he accepted what he did, he could do this and forgive himself. Shame wasn’t serious to him.
How did it happen?
The flies moved over the roads on his face.
Nine o clock. Storm rain outside. Cricket work finished. Don’t want to think. The kid has been around with the bottle and I haven’t opened it yet. I watch the wall behind me in the mirror. Alone. Want to think.
Tom Pickett walks in. Black trousers and white shirt, the thunderstorm making it stick to his skin. Got time for a good haircut, Buddy? I think he said that, something like that. I was looking at the shirt speckled with long water drops, making it brown there. I get up and give him a small towel to dry his hair, unscrew the top and hand the bottle to him. Jesus it hasn’t been touched, you sick? Shrug and point to the chair for him to sit in. Tells me, as always, exactly what he wants. Beautiful people are very conservative. And puts his feet up on the sink as usual. I lay the towel over his shirt and knot it at the back of his neck. He passes the bottle to me and I put it away.
‘I started talking about his mood which was so quiet you know so fuckin strange for him and he still wouldn’t say much. I guess if you want to find out what happened you should find out why he was like that. After a while I threw in a few cracks about the band playing too much and he didn’t say much about that either. He was cutting the hair then, he was doing what I told him. But he was … tense, you know. I started telling him this joke about, jesus I still remember what it was, aint that something? It was about the guy who is feeling good but everybody he meets tells him he looks terrible, well anyway he just said he’d heard it, so I shut up. I could see him in the mirror all the time. Then we started talking, I wasn’t pushing him now. About my pimping. We always did that. That was our one real connection. Usually it was good talk cos even though he wasn’t involved with the money he was a great hustler. I don’t know if you knew that.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well he always had a sense of humour about it. He didn’t come on like a preacher. So I was going