Chapter 4

They told him the bar had once been called The Killjoy, but Frank didn't know if he believed that. At any rate, there weren't any signs left. Even the big one out by the highway had been stripped by the wind down to the naked boards.

Dr. Death kept his radio rig in the back room. Every morning at four, he got up, heavy-footed on the concrete floor, rousing the rest of them so that they groaned and pulled the coats they had folded for pillows over their heads. He went out back and peeled back the sand-colored tarps from the antenna that lay on its side in the dust; he raised it alone and was back inside at five sharp, carrying the batteries that had spent the day previous baking in their solar-powered chargers.

He plugged them into the telegraph and switched it on, and while it chattered and spit tape, he warmed up a cup of coffee on the ancient hotplate behind the bar. He lit every lamp and candle in the goddamn place, like a ward against the darkness without.

Once the whole bar was ablaze, he sat down to read the dispatches as they came off the wire. The telegrams were always days behind, occasionally even weeks. Sometimes Frank would look at the pile of discarded tape and think that there must have been thousands of them out there, maybe millions, but during the time he spent at The Killjoy, he never met anyone else.

At six, when the batteries began to run low. Dr. Death started up the generator out back and powered up the transmitter and read the day's broadcast. If Frank had managed to sleep through the raising of the antenna, and the harsh glare of the lights, and the tapping of the telegraph, he'd have to get up then. They all got up, and moved like ghosts around the bar, eating canned rations and slipping out into the dusty parking lot to smoke.

By nine, the broadcast was over. Dr. Death powered off the generator and lowered the antenna. By ten he was drinking, and by noon he was drunk. Though he did manage to sober up a little in time to repeat the broadcast in the evening, by that time he usually needed Crow Jane to raise the antenna and switch out the batteries and refuel the generator for him.

They were left with the afternoons to take care of whatever small orders of business cropped up. On the first two days, they drove out to the car Poison had wrecked. The heat made Frank lightheaded and sick.

The car lay on its back in a ditch next to the road, baking in the sun. The passenger window was smashed and the frame was crumpled. They rolled it onto its side, pried open the hood and stripped out all the undamaged parts. Crow Jane said that when she sold them, she'd cut them in.

After they'd hauled out the engine, she pulled a Bowie knife out of her pack and slithered inside through the broken window so she could remove the upholstery from the seats. She'd pulled off her hoodie and left it hanging over the arm of one of a Joshua tree, and as she leaned out to pass Frank the first heavy sheet, he noticed the blue flowers that coiled up her forearm.

He wrestled the upholstery out the window. The vinyl was about a million degrees from sitting out in the sun, and it burned his palms so that red gummy blisters appeared in the creases of his knuckles. Frank wiped his hands on his jeans and nodded toward her tattoo. He said, "Where'd you get that?"

"I put it there."

"Yourself?"

"I was just practicing."

Crow Jane rubbed her hand over the roses self-consciously, and Frank heard himself say, "Want to practice on me next time?"

She squinted up at him. "It depends. What do you want?"

"It doesn't matter. But I want it here." He jabbed a finger into the side of his neck. "So that if I ever think I want to go back, I'll know that I can't."

That night, while Dr. Death clattered and cursed drunkenly by the light of a kerosene lantern back in the radio room, Crow Jane very carefully brought out the box that held her needles and the little vials of blue and black and green ink. She emptied the ink into a clean glass ashtray and held a fresh needle over the flame from a candle.

"Are you sure you won't tell me what you want?" she said, as she slid the needle into the gun.

"It doesn't matter," Frank replied. "Just make it something nice."

"You can't get pissed if you don't like it."

"I wouldn't get pissed. It's…" He struggled for the word.

"Symbolic?" Crow Jane said.

He looked down. "Something like that."

"You all do love your symbols don't you? Flags and crucifixes. And uniforms. Hold still."

She pressed the needle into the side of his neck. It didn't hurt, not the way he had expected it to, but he felt the humming of the tattoo gun all up and down the back of his throat. When he tried to speak his voice came out thin and without force.

"I don't know what—"

"You aren't going to stay here long, are you?" Crow Jane said abruptly, cutting him off.

"I don't know," Frank managed, surprised by the sudden change of subject. "Poison hasn't said anything about leaving."

"Do you do whatever he tells you?"

"It just seemed like he had something in mind."

Frank shifted in his seat, and Crow Jane grabbed him fiercely by the nape of the neck and held him still. "I guess it doesn't matter. But it's been nice, having someone around to talk to," she said.

She pressed the needle against his skin again, and he felt a deep ache moving through him, beading on his skin. He didn't like what she had said just then, didn't like the way she'd said it. He'd never had anyone want him around unless they were hoping to get something out of it.

He went rigid in Crow Jane's hold, but she didn't seem to notice. She rolled her shoulder back in a half-shrug that didn't interrupt the motion of the hand that held the gun.

"I know," she said quietly. "The Doctor doesn't always make a great first impression. He's better than you think, though."

"He's all right," Frank said. "I like him. I guess I like most people."

"It's because they tortured him," Crow Jane said. Her voice kept getting quieter and quieter, until he could barely hear it at all above the buzz of the needle knitting in and out of him. Frank could only see her a little out of the corner of his eye, but she never looked up from her work and her expression never changed.

"That was before the war. He wrote for the New Worker, and neither of us made any secret of our politics. Even when the Wall-Street Riots broke out on the East Coast, and then in Seattle, and then in Toronto, and then in Austin. And people were saying that when they'd said "Revolution" they'd meant it metaphorically. They'd meant an intellectual revolution. And they couldn't condone violence against the police, and against United States Troops. And he said they were traitors and equivocators, and that lost him a lot of friends who might have been able to bail him out before it was too late."

Frank was very still, listening. He didn't know why Crow Jane was saying this to him now, but he thought suddenly of Poison telling him that he had been easy to talk to when he was asleep. Frank felt wide awake now, but he wondered if, by some trick of remaining motionless and silent, he had made her think that he could not hear her.

"Then they pushed the hatespeech legislation through the House. They passed it as a rider on a bill allocating funds for a statue to commemorate a police officer who'd died in the Oakland riots. I remember it really well. He was the only non-civilian casualty, and he died when the shotgun he was firing into a crowd of protesters blew up in his hand. So they gave him a statue made out of marble and bronze. Very Classical and tasteful. It looked like a Civil War memorial. And there, at the very end of a 200 page bill about that fucking statue, were three sentences allowing anyone who expressed anti-Free Market or anti-Democracy views in print or in conversation to be held indefinitely, without trial, under the Patriot Act."

Frank shivered as a bead of ink burst on his skin and trickle down his neck. Crow Jane swiped at it with a tissue. The tattoo was starting to hurt him, but Frank felt that he was very clear-headed and sharp in spite of that, as if he were standing above himself, above the pain, and looking down.

And Crow Jane went on. "We knew it was only a matter of time then, and it was exciting. We wanted to be tested. Secretly, that was what we wanted. But in the end, it wasn't even personal enough to be a test. They drew up a secret list of suspected terrorists in the greater Battery City area, and his name was on it and mine wasn't. So they hauled him off to Alameda Street Jail, and didn't charge him with anything for the whole three years he spent there. And we weren't married because we had never even thought to be, so they wouldn't let me visit him. But I talked to some of the other men and women who came every day, and it seemed like even close family wasn't allowed in. That made me feel a little better. He got one letter out to me, and it said 'wait and see'. So I waited."

She paused again, looking at his neck as if inspecting the work, but she didn't seem to see him at all.

"Jane…" Frank started to say, but she just shook her head.

"Almost done now." She went back to work. "I waited three years, and then he came back. He said he escaped. He saw a chance and took it, because the guards got lax around the prisoners who'd been there a while. They figured they were too broken down to try anything. He said it took all he had to take the first step, and then after that it was easy. Show Pony was with him, and he already wore a mask to hide what they'd done to his face. Back then it was just a rag with two holes cut in it for the eyes. And he never spoke a word. And the Doctor said that he still loved the Revolution, and I could come with him if I wanted but – fair warning – he could never trust me because I hadn't been tortured. He said he'd never trust anyone ever again unless they'd been through what he had. But I loved the Revolution too."

All at once, she switched the tattoo gun off. She set it down gently and she folded the tissue over and cleaned off the ink. All her movements had become very careful and restrained.

"Remember, you said you wouldn't get pissed," she said. She brought the mirror out from behind the bar. The glass was warped and badly chipped, and the light was poor, but Frank could make out the bold black lines of a scorpion etched on the side of his neck. It wasn't anything special, but it looked perfect to him.

"Fuck yeah," Frank said, and grinned. "Badass."

Crow Jane taped a piece of plastic wrap over the tattoo, and they sat on the two remaining barstools and had a couple of beers. At that moment, he was pretty sure then he loved the Revolution too.

That night he slept on his right side to keep from laying on the tattoo, but when he woke up he had a pounding headache in the left side of his head. There were two words revolving in his mind. Each throb of blood that ran up his neck, past the scorpion, made them appear, like a neon sign flashing in the darkness.

Fun Ghoul. Fun Ghoul. Fun Ghoul.

It took him a long time to realize that it was suppose to be a name.

He moved his tongue slowly inside his parched mouth, flicked it over his dry lips as if tasting them for the words he had not yet spoken. He could hear the telegraph chattering back in the radio room. Through the open door, a wedge of warm lamplight angled across the floor.

There was movement, the sound of the others rolling out of bed, groping for their clothes, groaning a little. On an impulse, he squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. He lay still until they had gone, and then he stared up at the ceiling and enjoyed the feeling of being alone. The click of the telegraph became the buzz of white noise, and even the pain in his head came and went with a lulling steadiness.

He must have dozed again, because when he next awoke it was to the sound of Dr. Death beginning the broadcast day.

Saying, "In the incinerator room with the blackened walls in the basement of Blind Towers, in the reek of burned meat and disinfectant and lye, they're taking out the body bag that holds what's left of – enie menie minie moe – plenty of other body bags containing what they scraped up of John Doe. The insect fable is a certain promise, babies. The insect certain is the plague of fables…"

He flung back the blankets, pulled on his boots and shook out the vest he had used for a pillow. Out by the bar, Crow Jane was sitting on one of the stools, her back to the door of the radio room, her head thrown hard to one side, listening.

"Did he get started early? Or did he just never stop?"

Crow Jane smiled at him, thin lipped. "He's full of notions."

They kept their voices low so the microphone wouldn't pick them up. He started to tell her about the name that had come to him, seemingly in a dream, but then he stopped. "Poison…?"

She tilted her head slightly, indicating the door that led outside. He dropped his eyes, embarrassed, but then he went out onto the concrete porch. It was still dark, and the ground was bleached by a veil of frost. Poison was down at the far end of the porch, a dark shape against the dark sky. Only the cherried end of his cigarette cast a little light on his downturned face.

He touched his elbow, and stood up on his toes so he could murmur the name against Poison's ear. Poison turned and looked at him silently, as if affixing the image in his mind.

"What do you think?" Ghoul asked.

"I like it. I like most things about you."

A flush came over Ghoul's face. Poison didn't see it; he had already turned back to look out over the desert. Feeling suddenly reckless and impetuous, Ghoul seized his arm. "Like what?"

"Pardon?"

"What else do you like?"

Poison was quiet for a while. He moved with exquisite careless slowness, sliding an arm around Ghoul's waist. "I like that you saved me. I like that you're here with me now."

It wasn't what Ghoul wanted to hear, and he sighed. "Gerard…"

"Don't call me that."

"You've barely spoken to me since we got here."

Poison's hand moved, stroking him. He fit his palm around Ghoul's hip, and the outside ridge of his thumb slipped up under his clothes and found the little ribbon of sweat-slick skin above Ghoul's belt.

"You don't like it here, do you?" said Ghoul.

He moved closer, pressing his cheek against Poison's shoulder. The leather of his jacket felt cool against the side of his face. "I don't care what you decide you want to do," he said. "Just tell me first. Anything you want, I'll do it."

Poison didn't answer, but Ghoul knew he was listening. The cigarette still smoldered in the corner of his mouth, unsmoked and wasted.

"That's all I wanted to say to you," Ghoul said. "That, and the name. I'll see you."

He pulled away. Poison did not release him, but he let his arm slide from around Ghoul's waist. At the door, Ghoul glanced back briefly. Poison had not moved from the edge of the porch. The sun was coming up now, and in the blue light his skin looked pale to translucence. He neither burned nor tanned, no matter how long he spent in the harsh desert sun, and when Ghoul realized that he felt a cold splinter of dread lodge itself in his heart.

But you always knew, he told himself. You always knew just what he was.