The Cerebral Catalyst

Week and a half out of college. Now on a cot in a space of my own. A "loft" they called it, meaning a cell: 600 square feet beneath a twelve-foot ceiling. Exposed pipes. Exposed ducts. Two walls of exposed Cream City brick. Third wall a plywood partition. Fourth dominated by a steel-sash casement, cranked open onto the night.

FLASH, it went.

Something gone wrong?

And me not even fully unpacked yet.

Digital clock plugged in, though. Dimly reading 11:44. A quarter-hour left of Wednesday the 13th, for all you children full of woe.

FLASH.

Up then. Up and over to look out at what they called a "light court." Meaning an airshaft under a skydome, with my screenless window near one of the shaftcorners. Around which, not quite out of sight, I saw a flickering rhombus. Attached to it was a parallelogram: an agape frame of glass, projecting opposite.

Containing and presenting a midnight vision.

Very young it appeared. Very what in those days we called Oriental. Very if not extremely female.

A VYOF, suspended in midair.

Ivory hourglass with touches of jet, candlelit between coruscations. Holding in one hand what I guessed was a trigger plunger, connected to an unseen camera. Photographing herself wearing a magenta beret and nothing else.

Turning to the left (her right) and FLASH.

Twisting to the right (her left) and FLASH.

Stroboscopic from any angle.

Between the beret and hourglass was a face. Quite as VYOF as the body, but expressionless. Or at least without one I could identify at that time of my life.

Digital clock flipped over to twelve. A final FLASH and the floating parallelogram went dark. Ceased to be. Leaving me with my window open, but only the shaft to see.

Whatever something had been going on, I was not about to call it wrong.

By day I constructed models for Kurtzway Kollectibles, doing my part to maintain Milwaukee as America's Cultural Mecca. Famous for their decorative bongs, Kurtzway was trying to ride Laverne & Shirley's coattails up to ersatz groundlevel, with me carving endless bits of imitation Lennys and Squiggys and Big Ragoos. That was the dayjob.

Home space was down on Washburn Street, the industrial south side of town. They'd subdivided a foundry into height-conscious cells and called them the Strichleiter Lofts. Mine was #515, on the top floor. The one around the shaftcorner was #517. Intervening was a freight elevator and iron galleries that clanged underfoot.

Thursday the 14th I returned from Kurtzway with a local entrée—bratwurst on poppyseed—and a six-pack of Schlitz. Ate the first and drank most of the second (the evening being warm) while further unpacking. And acting distracted. Waiting for dusk to fall on almost the year's longest day. Gradually the airshaft darkened but remained empty, the rhombus around the corner a mere hole in the wall.

Had I been dreaming last night?

If so, could I arrange a rerun?

Crash went the elevator gate. CLANG-CLANG-clang on the gallery. Slam from #517's door.

And the magic casement reappeared inside the light court.

Electricity in the glass tonight. Mirroring—what? a spiral staircase? To the right was half a brass bedframe, its half-mattress draped with batik. To the left, by the casement hinge, was an ornate-looking highboy; over it hung a poster of Tutankhamen's metallic head.

Then off went the overhead. Back came the candles: fat ones grouped in twos and threes, lit apparently en masse, illuminating the VYOF in a deep dark gown. Sitting in profile with a cello before her. A cello? A cello. Bow in one hand, neck in the other, she began to make music. Cadences I would soon associate with Siouxsie and the Banshees and their album The Scream—"Jigsaw Feeling," "Nicotine Stain," "Suburban Relapse." Raw and snarling they struck me; insistent agitation mixed with eerie despair.

And as she played, as she gyrated and undulated to the tempo, her fluctuating likeness became not sharper but clearer. Black slash for closed lashes. Red parenthesis for open lips. Hair like ink-dipped porcupine quills. Two scoops of vanilla surging against a sable bodice. Pyrotechnic effects upon cello and bow, detonating what she wanted out of them.

While I stood by entranced, lost in her fervor and angst.

Friday the 15th I came home to find a man walloping #517's closed door. "Crank??" he shouted. "Craaaank!!" No response from within, so I left him to it. Went on to my own cell around the corner. (What kind of urban slur was "craaaank" supposed to be? A skank with crabs?)

Not my VYOF. Not the visions I'd gazed at two nights running (me standing, mind racing). What say tonight we make it three-for-three?

(The distant wallops ceased. Good: leave her to me.)

Wherever she might be. Twilight descended as I finished unpacking, groping in the murky gloom; putting away things I wouldn't be able to locate till I moved out a year later. No light came on that night and no music sounded. Though I stayed up waiting till well into the wee hours, looking out my window at a vacant airshaft. Which is not what I'd define as peeping tommery.

Then, come Saturday morning—

Awoke fairly late. First weekend here; no need to rush. Off the cot to stretch and scratch and search for breath. Damn it! Too much exhaled CO2 in this cell, stirred around by the ceiling fan in place of circulation. Grab my inhaler? Or rely on the window?

I boosted myself onto the sill and leaned as far forward as I dared. Into a light court filled with open casements, this floor and the four below. Nary a screen to be seen in the joint. Nothing to keep out bugs or even birds that might penetrate the skydome to roost among gone-sour Cream City bricks. Birds that could breathe throughout the weekend; so why not me? I wedged a fist into my solar plexus, willing the oxygen to reach my starved bronchioles, twisting and turning to help it along—

—and there she was. Perched upon her own sill in a black lace shortie nightie.

"Whutchew think YER gawpin' at?"

Oh her legs. Oh her breasts. Oh her beautiful almond-cookie face. Oh her…

—VOICE, for crying out loud. Piping hot, like Tanya Tucker on helium.

A delicate hand removed a brown cigarette from a petulant mouth that slowly curved into a smile. Dimples, even. As she inspected me in my tentpitching boxers, which were all I wore to bed on summery nights. Being a sophisticated art school graduate, I didn't budge a hair — other than to upgrade from pup tent to pavilion as I drank in more of my neighbor.

"Well," she chirped. "Aintchew jes the kewtest thang."

"Hey," I respired.

"Hey yerself. Kimberly Wu."

"Who?"

"Wu. Call me Cranky Lynnette."

"Why?"

Away flew the dimpled smile. "Cuz that's whut I'm called."

"Then who's—"

"M'name's Kimberly Wu. I'm called Cranky Lynnette. Git it?"

To illustrate the point (and make my pavilion flap) she fondled the casement crank at her side. Seen straight on, everything behind her was reversed: half-brass bed on the left, highboy and Tut on the right, staircase spiraling antipodally.

"Squeaky Fromme's real name," she remarked.

"Is...?"

"Lynette—one N. Mine's got two. I doubled it so 'Cranky Lynnette' woont have thirteen letters. Y'wanna bawl?"

"Um. Sure. Should I...?"

"Naw, I'll come over thar." Flicking her thin brown cigarette, still alight and trailing smoke, down the airshaft. "Gimme a sec."

"I'm in 515—"

"I know whar y'are, babe." Twinkle of legs and lace and she was gone. Out of sight: no reflective vistas at that time of day.

During her gimme'd sec I slapped on soap and water, toothpaste and mouthwash, then a shirt and jeans. Maybe I'd heard more than was meant. She could be coming over with a bowl of something — egg flower oatmeal, perhaps.

Rattle of knob. Escalating peevishly before I could get the door open. Impatient VYOF. No bowl in her delicate hand, but another thin cigarette stuck between her lips. A freshly crimson pout, to go with all the new lash-beading and lid-lining and socket-shading.

She had eyes like sloes. Fruit of the blackthorn, the spiny plum, Prunus spinosa; eyes the color of wine in a vault. Set obliquely in a head shaped like an old-fashioned spinning top: very wide brow tapering down to a very small chin above a very slim neck. Below that was the ivory hourglass, clad now in a skintight raven singlet and fleshtaut raven shorts. Plus a pair of silver suspenders, to accentuate her already emphatic form.

It was as if space aliens had concocted their idea of the Ultimate Earthgirl and gone a trifle overboard. Not heightwise or weightwise—up close she was diminutive, much shorter than myself—but oh the bosom-rack and oh the buttock-shelf and oh the waspy-waist swerving in from the uppers and out to the latters. Oh the Shalimar dabbed on every vital spot, convex or concave. The only thing remotely flat about Cranky Lynnette was her stare.

Which I got leveled with as she entered my loftcell. Acting like I'd enticed her over here with the flimsiest of blandishments. CHING-A-LING-A-LING she dismissed them, brushing past on sandaled feet that sported the first toe rings I'd seen outside an Arabian Nights movie. Each ring bearing a microscopic bell; each bell sending up an infinitesimal jangle as Lynnette scampered over to my workbench. Hopping atop it and yanking sharp objects out of the tool caddy.

"Kewl! Y'could cut up a body real good with these!" she trilled, testing a chisel bevel against her fragile thumb.

"Careful!"

"Aw, I'm tougher'n I look." Whistling forth a smoky plume (that smelled oddly sweet, like tobacco cut with chewing gum) she waggled the thumb at me. Then turned her attention to a bracket hanging above the bench, on which I'd set my first work in wood after abandoning clay. Practically new it was then; almost two years in the making.

"UH—"

"—I'm bein' careful," Lynnette quibbled. Grinding out her cigarette against one of my vises before picking up the piece. A nearly nude girl frozen in midwrithe, couched upon an oversized basswood hand. Cupping it in both of hers as she gazed down at A Perfect Fit.

"I'm a sculptor," I gargled.

"Yew made this?"

"Yeah."

(Stillness.)

"...will y'make one o' me?"

"Oh HELL yes!"

"Whoa-kay then," she went, replacing A Perfect Fit on its bracket (carefully) before reaching across to rip open my chest—

—no, just the sepia safari shirt I'd bought at Kohl's three days ago. Buttons flying everywhere; never did find them all. Followed by the rest of our clothing, discarded just as unsubtly. Cranky Lynnette left little in the way of doubt. Certainly none concerning her own endowments. If you took the other night's vanilla scoops and stuffed them with the other day's bratwurst, infusing the result with the essence of poppyseed, they could not have been more heartily succulent or exotically farfetched. More torrid to the touch or chilly to the feel.

Not that I was permitted to touch and feel exactly as I pleased. Three hayrolls with Bonnie Pattering I had under my belt, plus a number of later liaisons; but none of them prepared me for the likes of this jujitsu wrestling match. Against a naked ninjette, who soon had me pinned with eight crimson minigouges on her fingertips and two more on her thumbs.

"Jes... lay... still... 'kay? Lemme dew ya!"

"But... I want... to do... you too!"

"This ain't about me, babe," she whispered, giving my chin a love bite. (Some kind of bite, anyway.) So I lay... still... and let myself be galloped like a circus horse over the hurdles, through the hoop of fire, off the high dive into a frying pan. Ridden to Banbury Cross by a fine lady with rings and bells on her ten tiny toes; CHING-A-LING-A-LING!

Luminous Bonnie may have won blue ribbons, but Cranky Lynnette steeplechased for the gold. Running you roughshod with every jounce.

Did I want to bawl? Primal as John Lennon with the Plastic Ono Band. While she crooned over me in Chinese or Venusian, blustering "FOO! FOO! FOO!" through my brain: the echo of dark wings in a deep cave. Foo? Perhaps Fu. As in Kung. A martial artist cowgirl, spurring me on when I happened to lag, bridling me back if I ventured a bump or a grind of my own. Till we lolled together on the concrete floor, Lynnette's mouth tight on my throat, moving unhurriedly from one ear to the other. Planting a row of hickeys that would take years to subside. Surfacing at last to smirk down at me, flat stare turned to sharp sparkle, and say:

"That wuz fun! Howdy, neighbor."

I burned to kiss her then, on those lips that had been everywhere except pressed to mine. But when I tried, she reared her head away on its very slim neck till her very full yabbos hove into view. Proffering a couple of Szechwan gumdrops: "Gwan, he'p yerself... now th'other one... good baby."

Up she stood to step over me and mosey off into the bathroom. Ass oscillating like nobody's business.

I got to my feet more incrementally, anointed with spit and sweat and sushi-suet. By damn! By DAMN! Ought to grab her when she comes back, take her by surprise, clamp her onto the workbench and see how much she likes jes layin' still! Oh yes, mercy would be begged for, the CO2 thick with shrieks and moans and muffled paroxysms! Making my schweinhund report back for duty on the double despite all it'd just been subjected to. (Such was its puissance at age twenty-two.)

Lynnette emerged from the bathroom. Glanced up at my face, then down at my hound. Heaving an exasperated little sigh, she reached out—went wink wonk wunk—and wiped her hand on my stomach. Chirping "THAR y'go," like a corporate executive tossing a dollar into a trainee's birthday pot.

Make a wish and blow out the candle.

Then shimmy over to the fridge, find my medication collection atop it and select a vial. "Whut's this stuff?"

"Prednisone," I mumbled.

"Whut's that?" (Rummaging inside the fridge, extracting the last can of Schlitz.)

"A steroid. Anti-inflammatory. For asthma."

"Y'mean like not breathin'? Bummer." She popped open beer-can and pill-vial and sampled their contents in one swallow.

"Hey!"

"Hey yerself. Mebbe it'll he'p me git t'sleep."

"You're supposed to take it with food—"

"Okey-doke," said Lynnette. Chomping a frozen waffle and washing it down with Schlitz. Pulling on her black lace underpants and my buttonless safari shirt; tying it closed (more or less) with one of her suspenders. Yawning so expansively it made her stumble. "Oh gawd! I'm dyin' fer sleep. Gotta go catch me some Z's."

"It's after noon—"

"'N' I'd only jes got home, wuz havin' a bedtime smoke when yew poked yer nose in. Woke me all up." Frowning tetchily at me as she gathered sandals, singlet, shorts, the other suspender, and my box of frozen waffles en route to the door.

"Er—you could, uh, crash right here—"

"On that thing? Them sheets silk? Didn't think so. But say, y'gotta car? I'll be needin' a ride around 'leven or so. See y'then."

Kissing an index finger, she drove its crimson nail into my bare chest and jangled on out. Leaving me free to compose a letter to Penthouse Forum if I chose, or spend the rest of the day wondering how far she might be needin' this ride. There was a gas crisis that June, truckers striking nationwide, odd/even rationing at many stations...

...but odds were even if Lynnette said "Drive me to Shanghai," I would point my Subaru westward and floor the accelerator.

At the stroke of eleven I went knocking on #517's much-walloped door. It opened and a small mummy case was handed to me. No: a cello case, painted to resemble Nefertiti's coffin. With Pharaoh's daughter following it in a low-bosomed slit-skirted witching-hour gown. Hair moussed into fretful porcupine quills. Cosmetics reapplied till she appeared black and white and red all over. No suspenders tonight, but a large silver ankh hung from a chain into her cleavage.

"So?" she asked.

"Fuhhhh," I replied.

"Whoa-kay then." Tucking one of her brown cigarettes behind my ear. A kretek she called it, Indonesian cloves; bound to be better for asthma "than that nasty pezdaprone. It like t'give me hot flashes."

Instead of Shanghai, I was directed to drive a few miles north to Brady Street on the East Side. Once Milwaukee's counterculture habitat, now wilted and threadbare: funky little shops and taverns and coffeehouses and the boarded-up Astor Theater. Just off Brady was a waterbed emporium that must have seen more buoyant times. Beside it was a stairwell
leading down, and a sign that read (when you got up close)

Nonnamou's

• "summerfestering" •

sat dast cast • ladycage 1am

Following Lynnette, I descended into a cellar full of fog and din. The fog was a mingling of nicotine, patchouli oil and surly perspiration, emanating from hoodish-types at ill-placed bistro tables. Lynnette led me through this obstacle course to a bar at the far side, where she mounted a stool and traded Continental salutes on both cheeks with the lady bartender. "Tattoo Rula," I was told (barely audible over the heavy metal dirge in an adjoining room). To Rula: "M'new neighbor." To me: "Y'gotta name?"

"H. Huffman," I coughed.

To Rula: "Whut he said."

The barkeep inclined her gray mohawk. Looking like a Maori wisewoman who'd seen it all and had it engraved upon her skin, till Groucho Marx's sung-of Lydia faded by comparison.

I was going to order a Guinness and whatever Lynnette wanted, when I found her jut?strutting into the next room past an enormous bouncer. "Theo," Lynnette mouthed at me, and "Neighbor," she mouthed at Theo, who gave me an ominous watch-your-step once-over. In the next room were another couple dozen hoodish-types; additional smoke and oil and rancor, plus most of the cellar's din. Provided by a gargoyle in sunglasses and damp
cowhide and his likewise-attired backing band:

What goes on in your dreeeeams
Is nothing like it seeeems
You think they're falling leeeeaves
They're not what you perceeeeive
What's innocence at niiiight
'S corrupted by the liiiiight
No soul can answer whyyyy
Your heartbeat tells a liiiie…

A punk club (I thought). More Germanic than I'd imagined. Jaded patrons out of a Lang or Pabst or Murnau flick. Some were swaying to the gargoyle's elegy and some were genuflecting, while a clued-in few danced the Metropolis Bop: part trudge, part taunt, part android folly.

A droning crescendo ended this requiem, and there was expressionist applause.

"Varney Otranto and Dastard Castle," croaked the club's spectral MC. Whom I'd later know to be Non Nonnamou, a raccoon-eyed character with flaky complexion and omniscient grin, rigged out in a sack suit and string tie. He signaled to Theo and the cellar lights (hardly bright before) abruptly dimmed. "And now my friends, your own—your very very own—Cranky Lynnette."

A blue spot came up. As did anticipatory ruckus. Both enshrouding my Girl Around the Corner, seated with Nefertiti's cello between her fishnet knees. Raking the room with her horizontal glare while Non switched on a synthesizer and started to vamp.

Then she closed her lashes. Opened her lips. Took the bow in one hand and neck in the other. And began to make music.

Resonance wrung from catgut. A melancholy vibrato that rose and dove, soared and stooped, circling around Non's live-wire hurdy-gurdy as open lips formed red parentheses.

Out of which came song:

Once upon a time I cried myself awake
While I wondered how much longer my tears would take
I heard the sound of fingers running through my hair
Which was strange because I knew I lay alone-
But I guess you had to be there
Yes you had to be there.

Harboring an enemy who shares the pain
Of windflowers fragmented by the pelting rain
Anemones with tarnished petals planted deep
Inside me to give interminable sleep-
And you said:
No enemy
No enemy
Just seeking shelter from nevermore.

Cry for sanctuary though there's no escape
From the shadows flooding through us like liquid crêpe
An inundated couple can't come up for air
Which is sad because I used to come alone-
But I guess you had to be there
Yes you had to be there.

However much you covet the life you choose
Keep breathing on your own and you are bound to lose
Give shelter so interminable you will be
Like the fragmentary tears that set you free-
And you said:
We were the dead
We were the dead
We're not gonna take it anymore.

Finishing to a full-throated growl from the audience, punctuated by a sort of guttural "Eh eh... eh eh... eh eh..." I'd run across in old EC horror comics. The blue spot yielded to basement lighting and Lynnette disappeared momentarily into the hoodish-mob. Resurfacing on the damp cowhide arm of Varney Otranto, to leave me behind with her mummy case.
Trilling in passing: "Be a babe 'n' tote this home fer me, 'kay? See ya."

"Whoooozat?" the departing gargoyle droned.

"M'neighbor," Lynnette told him. So offhanded I wanted to shout I had sex on the floor with that woman twelve hours ago!

But all I did was turn to the bar and ask for a Guinness.

"How she plays," said Tattoo Rula. "Not the cello only."

"So what do I do?" I heard myself asking.

"You play back, Hoffmonn. Must be her game, her rules. Otherwise it is solo."

I drank my bitter stout and solo'd out of there, not waiting to see what sort of ladies might be caged at 1 a.m. Drove the hell away from that place, back down to Washburn Street. With the scent of Shalimar drifting up from Nefertiti in the shotgun seat. And a whiff of cloves from the Indonesian kretek I found still tucked behind my ear.

Sunday morning I was at the workbench, taking out my feelings on a hapless block of cherrywood, when:

Crash. CLANG-CLANG-clang. Slam.

And after a moment a paper airplane came sailing plain as day into my window to
land neatly on the cot. Unfolding it, I was confronted by four pictographs:

car agen 6p?
CL

"WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN??" I yelled out my window into #517's. Which was rapidly filled by a Wrathful Lynnette wearing my safari shirt (untied this time) as a wrapper, a sleepmask propped on her forehead and the rest of her face lathered with cold cream. Demanding to know whether I could read and if so did I honestly think it was anywhere near 6 p.m. and could I manage just once this weekend to let her slumber undisturbed, was she asking for the sun and moon here?

"Gawd sakes, Huffman!"

"Sorry," I mumbled. Averting my gaze from her sloes till she clapped her wrapper shut and stalked away.

"Yew 'n' yer gawpin'! Yer jes lucky yer so kewt!"

I didn't feel lucky at that moment. I felt in thrall.

To La Belle Chinoise Sans Merci.

______________________________________
P.S. Ehrlich's "La Belle Chinoise Sans Merci" is a stand-alone excerpt from the in-progress 13 Black Cats Under a Ladder. Other recent excerpts from 13BC have appeared in Thieves Jargon, Ten Thousand Monkeys, Unlikely Stories, The Sidewalk's End, and his own skeeterkitefly.com.

posted 05.07.06.

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