10.17.01

It’s Friday night and I’m stabbing Chloe repeatedly with a large steak knife I bought cheap at Duane Reade’s. I know she’s dead an all that, but the lack of blood is still surprising. Salsa helps, but it’s just not the same. Ketchup, of course. A can of creamy tomato soup for a real splashy "crime of passion" type of murder.

You know how it is.

I say, Please turn over honey, you’re kind of torn up back here.

At first, I don’t think she hears. Then Chloe rises up on one elbow, turns.

Thanks doll, I say.

We’ve settled down into a nice comfortable routine. We have a kind of unspoken agreement: I don’t try to please her; she doesn’t try to please me. It’s as unsatisfying as hell for the both of us, but hey, welcome to the afterlife! My hard-on is totally bogus. I hesitate to even call it a hard-on. It’s really a miracle of medical science, pharmaceuticals, splints, prosthetics, and a degenerate imagination.

I keep it going for 15, 20 seconds.

Goddammit, I’m not superman, you know.

It’s enough. It’s more than enough. Any more and Chloe tends to get bored. She starts asking me questions from The New York Times crossword puzzle. She does these things obsessively. It’s a little-known fact but the people at the New York Times assemble these asinine word games especially for the dead. I mean, who else but the dead would have time to do something as totally useless and inane as a crossword puzzle?

Chloe asks, What’s a 14-letter word for thinking out loud.

I’m fucking her now, quite vigorously, to absolutely no purpose.

Chloe asks, What’s a 9-letter word for the rusty, creaking sound of a hinge?

I listlessly stab her chest for a while. I’m careful not to sever anything. Chloe will let you do pretty much anything you want. But she draws the line at dismemberment. Well, that’s to be expected. I haven’t met a woman yet who didn’t have her limits.

Chloe says, Can you take your sunglasses off.

I think its another crossword puzzle clue. How many letters, I ask.

No, Chloe says. Can you take your sunglasses off.

I humor her. I think I look a lot less cool fucking without the shades, but its Chloe who has to look at me. I think she wants to see my eyes. I think she wants to see if I’m looking at her or not. That’s to be expected. I haven’t yet met a woman who didn’t expect you to look at her as you pretend to stab and fuck her to death. I’m not, of course. I’m not looking at her. I find the very idea to be almost unbearably pedestrian, if you know what I mean.

And so it goes.

The knife going in and out of her, the sound of it, it’s like cutting through a loaf of stale french bread.

I realize, after a while, that I’ve lost my hard-on, or whatever it was, somehow.

I stop all the thrusting, stabbing, panting, grunting, flexing, licking, murmuring, etc. I stop the whole goddam fake production. Chloe, eventually realizes this.

She says, Did you come darling?

You don’t know, you have no idea, how tired I am of hearing that question.