Rant

nightmare.
    Echo Lawrence: Rant lifted my hand toward me, saying, “Smell.” And I leaned forward to smell, nothing but my skin, my soap, the plastic smell of my old nail polish. His smell of insecticide.
    With my head bent down to meet my hand, Rant leans close to put his nose in my hair, his lips at the side of my neck, under my ear; he sniffs and says, “What was for supper two nights ago?”
    My fingers still tangled with his fingers. His breath against my neck. With his lips and the warm tip of his tongue pressed wet on my pulse, the heartbeat in my neck, I say, “Turkey?” I say, “Lasagna?”
    And Rant’s warm breath, his whisper against my ear, he says, “Taco salad. White onions, not yellow or red.” He says, “Shredded iceberg lettuce. Ground chicken.”
    My nipples already getting hard, I ask, “Light or dark meat?”
    Shot Dunyun: A head cold can distort how a peak will boost, the same way food never tastes the same when you’re sick. It must be I was catching a cold. But a week later, with no runny nose or sore throat, I still couldn’t plug in and boost a good peak. By then, I was picturing a brain tumor.
    Echo Lawrence: Kissing my eyelids, Rant whispered, “You should throw out those roses…”
    He had never been to my apartment. Back then, Rant didn’t even know where I lived. I asked him, “What roses?” “Were they from a boyfriend?” he says.
    I asked him to tell me the color of the roses. “Were they from a girlfriend?” he says.
    I asked if he’d been stalking me.
    And Rant says, “Pink.” Still kissing my forehead, smelling and tasting my skin, my closed eyes, my nose and cheeks, he says, “Two dozen. Nancy Reagan roses mixed with baby’s breath and white little-bitty carnations.”
    They were a gift, I tell him, from a nice middle-aged couple I sometimes work for.
    Shot Dunyun: The doctor at the clinic calls me a week later—really just a lady from the clinic calls—and says I need to come back at my earliest convenience. She won’t go into any details about my blood work. They get that bullshit smile in their voice, and you know it’s not good news. The billing department just really needs full payment before you croak. So I go, and the doc says—it’s rabies. No shit, rabies. He gives me the first of the five injections. He won’t promise that I’ll ever be able to boost another peak.
    Right from the clinic, from the pay phone in the waiting room, I phoned Echo and told her to never, never, ever let Rant Casey put his mouth on hers.
    Echo Lawrence: Kissing my mouth, Rant tells me my showerhead is brass instead of chrome. From the smell and taste of me, he says I sleep on goose-down pillows. I have a coconut-scented candle I’ve never lighted.
    Lew Terry ( Property Manager): The only occasion I entered Mr. Casey’s apartment was with our standard twenty-four-hour notice to enter premises. Rumor was, he kept pets. My first look around, I didn’t see nothing. A mattress on the floor. A telephone message machine. A suitcase. In the closet, hanging, are those blue coveralls that were the only clothes you ever saw him wear. Clean or dirty, Casey smelled like poison.
    If somebody says I took anything, there was nothing to take.
    Echo Lawrence: I didn’t let Rant kiss me because he smelled my food. I kissed him after seeing how gentle he treated this huge fugly spider. As we sat there in the backseat of the Eldorado, he unzipped the pocket of his coat and reached one hand inside. He opened his fingers to show me the biggest monster spider. Slowly turning his hand over, he watched the spider crawl from the palm to the back, perched on the big veins.
    Both of us looking at this monster spider, I say, “Is it poisonous?”
    Shiny, not hairy. Legs thin as eight jet-black hypodermic needles, the spider bends all eight knees, lowering itself to touch Rant’s skin. This spider looks as ugly as I feel.
    And Rant says, “I call her Doris.”
    Lew Terry: It’s there, in the back of Casey’s closet, lined up on the floor, I find the jars. Different sizes of mayonnaise and pickle and spaghetti-sauce jars, clear glass and washed out. At first they look empty, but I unscrew one lid. There’s nothing inside, but when I go to put the lid back, on the underneath side of each lid sits a huge black spider. Huge, grizzly bastards.
    No matter what anybody says, I didn’t take anything. Not money or anything.
    Echo Lawrence: Our breath fogged the car windows, but, watching