You Suck: A Love Story

but it was obvious that he was watching the loft door. He didn’t look like a cop, but he was definitely watching, so I stopped and pretended to watch the sculptors work who have the space under the master’s old loft. They are these two crusty biker guys, but they do some amazing shit. They’d left the garage door open so I stepped in.
    They were putting dead chickens on wires and dipping them in silver paint, then hanging them on sticks by the wires.
    So I was all, “What the fuck, biker? What are you doing?”
    And one of them was like, “It’s almost the year of the cock.”
    And I was all, “Don’t be gross, you crustacious fuck. You pull that thing out and I’ll pepper-spray you until you fry.” (You have to be stern with weenie waggers-I’ve been exposed to on the bus over seventeen times, so I know.) And he was like, “No, it’s the year of the cock in the Chinese zodiac.”
    Which I knew, of course.
    “We’re making statues,” said the bigger biker, who was named Frank. (The other one’s name was Monk. He didn’t talk much, which might explain the name.) So they showed me how they took real dead roosters they bought inChinatown, ran wires through them to pose them, then dipped them in a thin metallic paint, then put them in this big tank and attached electric clips to them. They pass some current through the clips and the current attracts bronze molecules or something to the metallic paint. It’s like instant bronze rooster. I thought about the statue of the Countess upstairs and got a little creeped out.
    So I’m all, “You ever do a person?”
    And they were like, “No way, that would be wrong. You’d better go now, because we’re behind and don’t you have school and stuff?”
    So walking out, I saw the Asian guy checking me out and I was like, “Hey, it’s almost the year of the cock. Shouldn’t you be out shopping for one?”
    He looked really nervous, but he kinda grinned. Then started his car and drove off, but he wants me, I can tell, so he’ll be back. I hope he wants me. He was so cute-in that Final Fantasy Thirty-Seven way.
    What I’m saying is, the Sex Fu is strong with this one.
    So there was no sign of my Dark Lord or the Countess at the new place. I wonder if they have crawled under the earth in some park and satisfied their perverse desires with each other among the worms and the tree roots. Eww!
    Oh well, almost dark. I’d better go back to the loft and wait for them.
    Addendum: The lice shampoo didn’t work on my sister. Looks like we might have to shave her head.
    I’m going to try to talk her into getting a pentagram tattooed on her scalp. I know a guy in the Haight who will do it for free if you verbally abuse him while he’s tattooing. More later.
    S undown. Jody awoke to pain and the smell of cooking meat. She rolled away from the source of the pain and went crashing through the acoustical ceiling tiles to land in a commercial sink full of dishes and soapy water. A Mexican guy was backing across the dish room crossing himself and invoking saints in Spanish as Jody climbed out of the sink and brushed suds off her jacket and jeans. When she touched the front of her thighs she nearly leapt back through the ceiling the pain was so sharp.
    “Mother-fuck-that-hurts!” she said, hopping around on one foot, because that will generally help all manner of pain, regardless of where it’s located on the body. Her boot heel clicking against the tiles sounded like a limping flamenco dancer.
    The dishwasher turned and bolted out of the dish room into the bakery.
    The bakery. When the alarm on her watch had threatened dawn she ran down the alley checking doors as she went, and the only one she found unlocked led into the stockroom of a bakery. She needed a place to hide where she’d be undisturbed while she slept, and although she considered hiding under a couple of the fifty-pound bags of flour, she had no way of knowing if the bakers would be using them today. She’d already awakened in a morgue once before (when Tommy had frozen her), and finding a rotund necrophiliac morgue attendant rubbing his hands and other bits over her seminaked body while she thawed had soured her to the whole morgue experience. No, she had to find someplace more secluded.
    One of the bakers had been coming into the stockroom, she could hear his voice and footfalls outside the door. She looked around for somewhere to hide, then spotted the grimy acoustic ceiling tiles suspended above.