Single: Miss Tennessee b/w The Cryerer | Page 6

with him.
Where was she?
The Cryerer thought maybe he had killed her. He didn't actually think so, but he had the thought. When the fever was bad, such thoughts came from nowhere, shouted at him from a great, echoing distance. You killed her. Like the smell of sulfur. Depraved. He went through the events of the night before like a clown counting his fingers after waving them into the lion's cage. He could do this, he promised himself.
Had she really rolled down her hip-huggers and let a team of development executives lick liquor and salt off her perverse paunch in an after hours club in Los Feliz? Had that happened? Had she gone completely drug mad and challenged all manner of men to all manner of things and then looked at him and shrugged like this had an inevitability to it that was obvious?
Yes. That was something she would do.
Had she stood, bombed out, in his shower wearing only a strapless bra, staring up into the nozzle and letting water splash over her face and into the dark grooves of her body, slicking back her black hair and smiling blissfully as if she were standing, not bombed out in a shower, but in the chill, rejuvenating folds of a waterfall?
Yes, yes. This made sense.
And, thus soaked and resuscitated, had she snapped back, remembering where she was and who he was and, in short, thrown herself at him, cooing sweetnesses and addressing his flesh in a way he pretended was, but knew was not, unaided by substances abused and pre-existing conditions? He thought of the backs of her knees pressed against his elbows, her tanned toes pointing. "Is what is like with ballerina," she said. "Is what is like with everyone," he thought.
She had not been a ballerina in some time.
The Cryerer rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. His vision strobed, and he imagined he was part of a photographic experiment designed to determine if his feet left the ground as he shuffled. He shook an empty bottle of Valium and an empty bottle of Xanax. He shook a forgotten bottle of Dramamine by his ear and tablets rattled inside like dice in a cup. There were three. He washed them down with a handful of warm water before falling back onto the bed and muttering ... for the motion of the Earth ... into the pillow.
When the Brazil Nut called, the Cryerer was standing in a 24-hour drugstore in the Valley. He was in the magazine aisle, checking on the competition. What his agent said was true, he reminded himself. He was the best. There was a guy in Chicago turning in good work in telephone commercials and another in Miami who scored well in Hispanic households, but he was the best. He had range. From a single, slow-rolling tear to a face- wrenching, hyperventilated blubber, there was no cry the Cryerer couldn't do. He had cradled dead babies and dead soldiers and dead sisters in his arms. He had received grim prognoses, medical results, and death sentences. He had been shot wide, close-up, and from cranes, looking up from the lifeless bodies of babies and soldiers and sisters, crying out into slowly rotating skies.
He read a story about a movie star he had known in Van Nuys, when he, the star - - both of them for that matter -- was a nobody. It took him a long time to answer.
"Oh hi. Your are up?" the Brazil Nut said, shouting over music bumping in the background.
"I couldn't sleep."
"Are you out?"
"No. I'm at a drugstore."
"It sound like you are out."
"No. I'm not out. Where were you this morning?" he asked, only slightly relieved to be cleared of a capital crime.
"Out," she said. "Why don't you come out?"
"I can't. I have to be at the Mall tomorrow."
"You are shopping?"
"No. It's just a thing.
"Thing?"
"Yes." he said, distracted by the magazine. "I'll talk to you later." He put the phone in the overcoat he wore over his pajamas, took out a bent cigarette and lit it. Despite frequent appearances as the Brother, people didn't recognize him in drugstores in the middle of the night. Sometimes people asked if he was okay, if he was sad, but even they didn't know why.
This guy, he thought as he read. People probably recognized him in 24-hour drugstores. Here were pictures of his secret wedding in Malibu, apparently taken from a helicopter. Here were stills lifted from video shot by a turncoat guest. The Cryerer thought of some videos from Van Nuys the bride might like to see. He puffed on his cigarette without interference from the security guard, who was busy dazzling the cashier with shoplifting stories.
The Cryerer heard his name and collected his pills at the pharmacy, dropping the magazine on a row