Her future came to her in a dream, as it had so many times before. Dinah couldn't remember the dream, or even what it looked like, but there was always something to the premonitions. Something she wished she could recall in the stark light of day.
Something brass and steel, shifting in the dark.
This time, she woke weeping, fleshy arms a little sore where she'd clawed at them in the deep night. It wasn't so strange anymore. Her tears stopped soon enough besides, and then all she had was the ache and crust in her eyes. She wrote it all down in the journal beside the bed (along with what she could recall of the dream), snapped a Kodak of her wilting body, and went to go brush her teeth.
Just another day behind the woodshed for Dinah.
Woodshed Street is a single lane road. It's never needed to be any larger. Strange for LA, but people don't visit the woodshed often. The road winds and curves, and blindspots are distressingly common. What driver would take a second look at that road, a dirty little access road off the I-5 beside a Motel-6 and a sign that says CAUFIELD FIRES MEMORIAL.
The road itself is poorly maintained, pitted and rough. Bushes climb themselves onto the dirt, and the only thing more common than weeds is the oil-reek strangling them. The roar of an approaching engine might be heard miles out, guttering through the overgrown path.
One passed just then, a ship in the night. Dinah heard Granny Anjali peer out through her white-curtained windows, the swish echoing down the corrugated metal walkways and thin wood corridors. She heard the old lady totter on her dark feet, rheumatic and crooked, her nails skittering on the linoleum of her yellowing kitchen. The curious squeals of her grandchildren.
"SHUT UP!" Howled O'Conner. He was an old man, but his ears had yet to go. He could hear everything Anjali did like he was next to her, same as Dinah, but for him, it seemed the sounds drilled right into the softest bits of his mind, what was left after the trepannatory of Vietnam. The thump, slide of movement in her home rang his brain like a bell and he'd scream and rant and hurl his stick at the wall like he could get up and do something about it. He couldn't. He hadn't stood in 15 years. His kids dropped off ez-heat meals once a month and otherwise left the old man to die in his wheelchair. And for all that, what really ate at him was that no one responded. Never screamed back. Dinah had learned her lesson, seen the pleasure in his flat eyes when she'd howled back, the-
Well. He hadn't hidden how much he'd enjoyed it. She'd vomited, later that night. He'd heard that too. His laughter had echoed across three floors.
The elderly, the infirm, the immigrants unwanted even among others - they all ended up here. And like a runny yolk, they spilled themselves out, let a little bit of their lives pool and touch everyone else. It was unpleasant, listening to a man beat his wife. She'd taken her ear off that wall and moved to the other, where newlyweds were consummating their love instead. A more pleasant channel by far.
It was said there were no secrets behind the woodshed. Dinah was still learning that truth.
For all that, it was vivacious. July was the first tenant, and much like the rest, she had never left. The days stretched long and pleasantly warm, and there was never any need of heating or cooling. The only privacy afforded was her jade skirts, draping across them all, thick bands of ivy and creepers running up every building until the windows were fogged and the stained walls hidden.
That, and some earplugs, and most nights she could even sleep well.
But the days the tenants looked forward to, were the rainy days. There was a TV in the first floor lounge for anyone who didn't have one - it ran the weather report, twenty-four-by-seven. Today, rain, 80% it said. By afternoon, the clouds overhead released a gunfire spread of rain upon the tin roofs of Woodshed Street that left the slick white snow a muddy black-brown and sent the whole building a-uproar with wild excitement.
When rain struck tin roofing and corrugated walkways, it was the sound of God's own snare. For two hours, in a world where every secret was laid bare, no one could hear what you did. What a blessing. Dinah was still learning to appreciate that too.
Dinah was smoking, you see.
Small-minded, perhaps. She was slightly embarrassed that she'd gone for something she did regularly anyway, but she had no great secrets to keep.
Her soaps were on, telly flickering. She sat in slowly yellowing underpants, occasionally watching Candi have her way with vapid morons too stupid to realize she'd been angling for Tyler the whole time. The slut. Thrilling stuff, really.
Dinah considered adding her own piercing shrieks to the occasional din of O'Connor's screams of pain that broke though even the hail, but he hacked up a gunshot and went deathly silent. Maybe next time, Dinah.
Dinah stretched irritably, wondering if she should go make dinner. She kicked at a ball of paper with her heel and it rolled a bit. She swept it aside with her leg impatiently, snookering it into several others. Hundreds of them littered the floor to the left of her seat. Mater in chartam sat on her lap and while the telly shined, words scrawled across in messy letters were visible.
A BABOON HAS HOLD OF MY SOUL, A BABOON WITH GREAT BLACK EYES AND FUR LIKE JET, AN ASS LIKE CANTALOUPES AND THE TENDENCY TO FLING MY SHIT ABOUT. AS THOUGH, FOR LACK OF A CORPOREAL FORM, IT SETTLED FOR WHAT WAS LEFT OF MY LIFE
THIS BABOON IS NAMED
"Wait," she said aloud. She licked her lips. They were dry, and tasted funny. Flecks of her spittle crusted the corners. Her voice was hoarse from disuse. "Baboons don't fling their shit. That's chimps."
Her pen shredded through the membrane in a sudden fury, piercing through and giving her leg a nasty cut. Yanking it out, she rammed her pen through half a dozen times, each more violent than the last. When she stopped, pen held overhead, her arm ached fiercely and her thigh burnt a line of fire down.
Dinah hissed at her aborted vengeance, and yanked and tore that strip of non-sense, of pure no-good trash right off the top of her pad, crumpled it and mangled it and simply tossed it lightly aside like one might toss salt, fury spent. Away, keep the badness away. Out of sight, where it might not taint what was good and clean. Her pad was clean once more, like she'd never written a word, winkin' dixie at her like it was all ready to be full up. She hurled that aside too.
Her lap was empty, save for the beads of blood on her thigh. The telly shouted canned laughter at her. She extinguished her cig and fell dead asleep.
A great American sage had once believed a man was more than his biology. That he could be part of his land and be greater for it. It was the machine men who lived for their chemistry, their godless robot existence one to be pitied.
Well, he'd learned. He'd changed, just like the rest of them. He told her so, and as she awoke, his voice was still in her ear.
You know what makes it all better whispered a voice like desert wine, like grit and salt.
The dream was over, memories of a man (all her dreams were of men these days, more's the shame) sliding away as she clawed back to wakefulness. The TV was an anchor, screaming geckos and too-fake babies holding down her mind. But the great sage was still with her, realer than the dream, real enough she could feel him. She felt him like a heat on her back, like a finger dancing on her mind, like a raindrop on her eye. She shuddered, tracing the thin red line on her thigh. He whispered such words to her. The temptation was strong. She was weak. Only a mortal.Look at you now Steinbeck, she whispered. Where's your machine man now?
It's a mechanical world these days. Die hero, live villain, etc. You know how it goes. The FBI won thirty years ago and I'm a dead man. You want me to suffer?
She attempted to reason with the voice. It was only 3:30 in the afternoon, after all, hardly the right time. She had no taste for it just yet, she didn't feel the need. Did a horse drink piss? Did a lion pounce full? These things needed time. Time. Money.
But the great sage was not so easily persuaded. And nor was Dinah. She realized her clever little fingers had already reached down past the reclining bit of her recliner to a clever little fold in the cloth her mother had taught her, the kind you navigate by fingertip-only.
Her fingers danced, flicking through rack after rack of baggie, serious shit, the kind that gets you high or gets you in the pit.
Give me that stardust, bitch. Give daddy his fix. Give me my fucking chemistry, whispered the great American sage and Dinah realized that he'd long since ceased to speak and it was only her. Only her. Her and the high.
Dinah snapped awake as her buzzer blared again and again, urgency manifest, accidentally hurling her pen across the room. Her pad slid off her lap and slammed into her foot corner first and she howled, leaping bolt upright and kicking the damn thing. All she accomplished was fluttering a few of the pages as it tumbled end-over-end and hit the wall.
She panted for a few seconds, apartment blessedly silent.
Her foot ached terribly, and her thigh burned. She looked down at her nakedness and saw a looping cut, beads of blood erupting from it, stretching down her thigh. When had that happened?
The bell rang and she swore aloud. O'Conner howled a bleating fuckword and somewhere a baby started crying. Dinah felt like crying, sometimes. She limped hurriedly across her sticky carpet, past her discarded bra, and rammed into her door in a fine temper, shouldering it open when it stuck on the swing-out like it always did, almost falling through. The afternoon air hit first, heavy and hot. It was always July behind the woodshed; even December hid.
Her guest flinched back, conscious of her nudity in a way she had forgotten to be. Long forgotten to be. She stopped, chest bare and hardening in the backblast of wind, and took in the formal blue-and-silver uniform of the man on her doorstep.
The rain had stopped at some point, so she could hear her neighbors fall silent.
"Mully!" She said, falsely bright, leaning back. She watched his eyes drift, and saw the flash of disgust in his eyes as he took in her withered form. Fury boiled hot, up from her navel, where it seized her around the throat and rattled her head.
"I was checking in," he said gruffly, averting his eyes. "You haven't been seen in a week or so. Some of us were worried." His voice was dead, despite the touching words. Mully was on Vice, she recalled faintly. He'd been a hotshot boy wonder twenty years ago. Then he'd plugged a dealer. Cocaine.
A needle of fear slowly slid through her chest.
She cleared her throat, false smile going waxy as beads of sweat erupted across her body. She hoped he wouldn't ask to be invited in. "I'm in timeout, didn't you hear?" She said, "I'm not supposed to show at work."
"Right." Mully said uncomfortably. "Yeah. The Rooke kid - look, we're sorry about that. Malcolm was-is a solid guy. I dunno what he was doing, selling you a crock of shit like that."
"Is that what this is? An apology?" Years too late, if she even gave a shit anymore. She was too far down the rope to hold a grudge anymore. All she wanted was for this fucking spook to leave. Mully was a decent guy when he was off the bottle, and a decent guy was not what she wanted around right now, bottle or no. "That case happened two years ago, Mully, and there's been a lot of shit since then."
"No," He said gruffly. "I mean, yeah, it's-it's an apology from the boys down at Vice. Personal thing. But I was actually here to ask…"
She stared, all but seeing a thought lodge itself in his throat and go right back down. He swallowed, and went silent instead. Dinah felt like screaming.
"Is there something wrong, Mully?" She asked instead, slowly. "Is there something I should know?"
"No," He lied bluntly. "No. Nothing, really. Just some weird designer drug. Trips people out hard." He sketched something out in the air, meaningless without further details, and let his hand slap to his side. There was an alien nervousness in his eyes. "It's been going around. Bad business." He tipped his stupid hat to her. "Keep an eye out. If there's anything you see, go ahead and let ol'Mully know. Take care."
"Right," she muttered, watching him tromp back down the hallway. "Nothing to say at all." She heard her glasses rattle behind her, his heavy footsteps making the metal squeal underfoot and the walls rattle. "Piece of shit."
"Mothafucka." Agreed a small voice beside her. Dinah jumped nearly out of her skin, stumbling to the side and took off a patch of skin on the metal latch of her doorknob. She swore, almighty and pissed, slapping a hand over the burning scrape and turning watery eyes down at the little voice. A small boy stood beside her solemnly, olive and dark eyed, picking his nose with a boundless sort of vigor.
"Mothafucka honky," He repeated nasally, and Dinah snickered a little. He brightened at her laughter, shock-white teeth appearing in his little face. She shook her head, and held out a finger.
Wait here, the finger said, and she ducked back inside, duckwalking to the bathroom and seizing some dignity on the way. She screamed a little as she splashed some peroxide on the skin but she bound the scrape up nice and tight, wore something loose top and bottom, and marched right back to the door, where the boy had duplicated. Two of him now stood, one in skirts, both equally fastidious prospectors.
"Wipe your hands," she said crossly, and they nodded and did so. And now, they turned to her in that peculiar way of children, waiting for her to say something so they could ignore it.
"What did you want?" She asked warily, and true enough, they ignored her completely.
"You know cops?" The girl asked.
"Used to work with them."
The girl nodded and turned to the boy imperiously. "She do."
The boy chewed his lip thoughtfully. "'Kay," he said finally. He nodded twice like something was settled, and turned to Dinah. "Gonna show you somethin'," he announced. With kids, this was usually nothing good.
"What if I don't want to."
"Gonna torch your house," He said seriously. "Burn it like ol'Boy down the street torch'n cats ev'ry morning."
Fair enough. Dinah carefully asked for ol'Boy's name, and when asked why, informed them very seriously that ol'Boy would be spending some time getting proper fucked by the government's mailed fist, since he'd decided velvet wasn't to his taste. They nodded like they understood, and not for the first time, Dinah questioned if she really knew what the fuck kids were thinking.