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in. Focused now and followed the shot glass up to Sissy's face. Then she brought the glass
to her lips and shot it back, and there they had it. The "shooter" scene.
Leonard maintained the hold as Sissy swallowed it, licked her lips and opened her mouth
as proof.
Then she threw up on the floor.
«« »»
The pig flick, now, was officially over. As promised, Leonard gave the girls one bag of
heroin to split amongst them; they scampered to their room like gleeful cadavers, and
Leonard suspected that they'd be out of his hair till morning.
He was wrong.
Just as he was tuning in GTB and preparing to process the last of the film, he was
beckoned.
"Leonard!"
"Bad, bad pig!"
Oh, man. What's wrong now? Leonard wondered.
He tromped back to the girls' room, not calculating anything of serious note...until he
heard
"What the hell's going on in there!" he bellowed and broke into a trot.
The noise which issued from the back room came as a collision of outraged female
shrieks, high-pitched pig squeals, and a steady clunking and thrashing. It sounded like a
rumble in there.
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
And what accompanied each WHACK was a gust of something part mewl, part shimmy,
like someone impacting a dog toy with a stick.
Only the sticks, in this case, were a couple of two-by-fours, and the dog toy...was the pig.
Sissy and Snowdrop were beating "Arnold" with the two-by-fours.
The sight held Leonard in a momentary stasis. WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
He stood there and stared. WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! His mouth hung
open and his arms drooped at his sides. In only seconds the two naked 90-pound girls had
successfully beaten the pig to the floor.
"Motherfuckin' pig!" Snowdrop maniacally screamed.
"Give it back!" Sissy shrieked.
"Gonna send you to pig heaven, fucker!"
"Bad, bad pig!"
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
More incredulous staring on Leonard's part. He seemed frozen by this spectacle. Now the
pig lay bloodied and quivering on the floor. A few futile chortles then, a few shivers.
Then it threw up and died.
Leonard snapped. "You assholes! You killed the pig!" He thunked immediately to his
knees and uselessly applied his hands to the pig in some unknown gesture. He felt no
heartbeat nor pulse. Nothing. Nothing but a plume of pig puke and a dead Chester pig.
"It ate our smack!" Sissy defiantly yelled.
"Yeah!" Snowdrop joined her. "The little fucker scarfed our skag."
Leonard looked up, fire in his eyes. "You're telling me that the pig ate your heroin?"
Sissy was trembling, her waxpaper-like skin glazed with the sweat of exertion. "Damn
right, Leonard! We worked hard for that junk and the pig came in here and started biting
us and he ate it."
"The pig ate the heroin?!" Leonard bellowed again.
Snowdrop countered, her tiny tit-flaps waving in her tirade: "We were about to fire up
and the little fucker barges in here trying to eat us, and the bag of junk was on the floor
and he ate it! He ate the candles too!"
Leonard felt fit to cry. The pig ate the heroin. The girls killed the pig. Could anything've
been more ludicrous? Leonard put his face in his hands.
"Don't you girls realize that Rocco's coming back here on Friday? He's coming to pick up
the movie. And you know what else he's coming to pick up? He's coming to pick up the
pig. So what am I going to tell him? Gee, Mr. Rocco, sorry. The girls beat the pig to
death with two-by-fours'? That won't float! He'll kill us!"
The tenor of Leonard's complaint, and the implication that came with it, had little effect.
"We don't care, Leonard!" Sissy shrilled.
"Yeah," Snowdrop added. "We need more junk!"
"Give us our junk, Leonard!"
"Yeah!"
"That goddamn pig you made us fuck ate our bag, so give us more!"
Leonard could only continue staring. They didn't care about living. They only cared about
heroin. Fuck it, Leonard reasoned. He reached into his pocket and tossed the remaining
bags of heroin at them. "Here. Shoot yourselves to Palookaville."
The girls fell on the bags like a fumble drill, squealing exuberance. Leonard leaned over
and began to drag the dead pig out of the room.
«« »»
"It's 1977! I hope I go to heaven!" Joe Strummer gruffly belted out from the first Clash
album. Zyra's show on WGTB started at 9 p.m. every Monday night this new stuff
called Punk Rock. Groups with what Leonard thought of as silly and pretentious names
like the Adverts, the Vibrators, Johnny Mo-ped, the Stranglers, and some bunch of
frivolous idiots called the Sex Pistols. Leonard didn't much care for it; it seemed to
portend the future's end of music. Where's Phil Manzanera when I need him? But at least
this new Punk stuff beat the Starland Vocal Band. X-Ray Specks broke into "Oh Bondage
Up Yours" as Leonard dragged the pig across the living room floor.
What I am gonna do now? he worried. What's Rocco going to say? Leonard supposed
burying the pig was his only recourse. He could say it got away or something. Shit, he
didn't know. To make matters worse, after the next tug of the pig's hind legs, its bowel
voided, leaving curls of excrement on the floor, and it was at that very moment when
Oh, man!
there was a knock at the door.
«« »»
"You're the girl in the " but then Leonard cut it off quick. What could he say? When I
was splicing the end title footage on Two Mules for Sister Snowdrop, I got a quick hold
of your face in the b.g.
"Can I come in?" his visitor hurried, looking over her shoulder. And, yes, there was no
doubt. The same girl behind the hedge, Leonard couldn't deny. A spartan black ankle-
dress, clunky black shoes, billowed sleeves with white cuffs, and the white tie-down
bonnet with tendrils of blond hair escaping. Before Leonard could even think about
inviting her in, she squeezed by him in the doorway as if fleeing killers.
"Fuck," she said and sighed when he closed the door. "Thanks."
"What's, uh I mean "
"I'm Esther, I just snuck out of the compound and I think my fuckin' brother saw me."
But Leonard was stunned. The compound? "You must be one of the...Epiphanites," he
finally voiced. "Any relation to Rector Solomon?"
The girl snorted as her gaze roved the dilapidated living room. "Yeah, he's my fuckin'
grandfather, the old fuck. Hey, you got any booze or pot?"
"Uh, no, I'm sorry," Leonard said. And I'm fresh out of Burmese heroin too, but I've got
lots of dog food... Only now was he beginning to lineate his thoughts. An outsider was in
the house a Mafia safe house. He'd flopped the dead pig into the kitchen and closed the
door, and Snowdrop and Sissy were comatose in back. But still, he had to be very careful.
"I apologize for the smell," he said of the house's fetor. "I'm a...a dog breeder."
"Oh, yeah? I saw the pens out back." She pulled an end of a tie string and off came the
bonnet. Luxuriant honey-blond hair spilled out. She's beautiful, Leonard thought dumbly.
Even in the austere apparel. An ample bosom filled the top of the dress, close to
stretching against big, clunky, hand-sewn buttons.
"Is there...something I can do for you?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, still letting her eyes roam. "Wow. Electric light, haven't seen
that in a while. My mother escaped the compound when she was a teenager, went to
Philly, got into drugs, you know the scene. By the time Solomon found her, I was 14, and
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