The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [0]
Savage
Girl
a novel
Alex
Shakar
For Saint Olivia of the Catfish
. . . After looking curiously over his panes of glass one by one, I exclaimed: “What! You have no colored glass, no pink, no red, no blue! No magic panes, no panes of paradise? Scoundrel, what do you mean by coming into poor neighborhoods without a single glass to make life beautiful!” And I pushed him toward the stairs.
Going out on my balcony I picked up a little flower pot, and when the glazier appeared at the entrance below, I let my engine of war fall down perpendicularly on the edge of his pack. The shock knocked him over and, falling on his back, he succeeded in breaking the rest of his poor ambulatory stock with a shattering noise as of lightning striking a crystal palace.
And drunk with my madness, I shouted down at him furiously: “Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!”
—CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, from “The Bad Glazier”
Contents
Epigraph
. . After looking curiously over his panes of glass one by one, I exclaimed: “What! You have no colored glass, no pink, no red, no blue! No magic panes...”
Smirkers
Stitching
The savage girl kneels on the paving stones of Banister Park, stitching together strips of brown and gray pelt with elliptical motions of her bare arm.
Superheroes
The kiddie playground of P.S. 179. Children toss and tumble, a maddened sea of screams and limbs, in the middle of which, high and dry, sits Ursula’s boss...
Candyland
Ivy is sitting by the unopenable window, in a wooden chair with arms that scythe around her like the pincers of a giant beetle.
Training
Sure, trendspotters are supposed to blend in, Javier explains as they cling to the pole of the jostling subway car...
Postirony
. . . Find the future, Chas Lacouture said, leaning back in his chair and allowing Ursula the view, the cloud-capped spires and fog-stockinged spindles of Middle City...
Warpaint
Ursula came here as a teenager, one of the thousands comprising the nightly spectacle that was and still is Harvey Street...
Continuum
A squad car creeps along the paths of Banister Park, its headlights slowly sweeping around, sparking along the fence bars.
Surfaces
Chas unrolls the airbrush painting on his desk, pinning the corners in place with his desk phone, his cell phone, his Palm Pilot, and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
Paradessences
Ursula crouches against the wall at the end of one of the long corridors at Middle City Airport, an unused clipboard propped against her knees.
Teeth
Their mother is here today, sitting by the bed in the only chair and reading a four-month-old issue of Self magazine while Ivy sits curled into a ball against the headboard...
Superstition
The savage girl sits Indian-style, her back to the statue’s sun-warmed marble pediment, calmly but diligently scrubbing a large bone...
Suit
U is the axis of the woman in the man’s bed that is nothing but a bed. i is the axis of of the woman in the hospital bed that is also a bed of sand...
Wampum
The savage girl on the screen is both voluptuous and strong. Her thighs are soft, while her haunches are muscular.
Magic
At night, in bed, Javier’s body becomes a lunar landscape of concavities—the hollow of his chest, the widening valley down the middle of his rib cage...
Plastic
That guy in there,” Ivy says, pointing into a room as they walk by. “You see him?”
Hitmen
The two of them—James T. Couch and James T. Couch’s Irony—adjust their glasses on their nose and peer through the Plexiglas wall at the shadowy forms...
Blackout
She finds Chas sitting in his darkened office. A small desk lamp in front of him glows meagerly, leaving a raccoon’s mask of shadow around his eyes...
Savages
Guru
The Black Tower’s conference hall has never been a cheerful place, but for this occasion Chas has taken the gloom to a whole new level, blotting out the already meager daylight...
Famous
The restaurant in the Pangloss Hotel is a five-star affair with five-star prices, but the theme is greasy-spoon-diner all the way.
Invisigoths
The circular stairwell in the statue