Read Online Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott - Free Book Online Page B

puffs of smoke into the rafters.
    “Amsterdam is like nowhere else,” I say.
    Toine motions toward Rynant with his pinky finger and leans toward me while nodding at the stage. “He has to clean that every night. How do you think he does it?”
    Rynant sees Toine pointing at him and bellows, “Homie number one!” Rynant is the strong man in the circus, furrows of skin on his face like a Chinese bulldog. He hoists a keg of beer on either shoulder and marches them down the stairs. I’m drinking whiskey tonight, since we can drink whatever, and Taco clucks at me and shakes his head, smiling. Nothing matters to anyone.
    “How could you leave this?” Toine says, waving his arm before him. “Are you sure you can’t be converted? Nowhere else in the world.”
    “Stop it,” I say. “It’s not fun anymore.” Winter is coming soon and when winter comes there will be no more work for anyone except Toine and one or two of the others. Jessie has left. Toine and I watched her from the couch. She folded her clothes carefully into two bags and then stood with one in each hand. Toine was as happy as I had ever seen him. I thought he was going to clap.
    “You’re like a stone,” she said to Toine. She wasn’t even looking at me. She left the door open and I considered running after her.
    An American woman, older and thick with bleached blond hair, someone who was probably never beautiful, is standing in the audience and has taken off her shirt. She’s hefting her breasts in her hands and pushing them to her face where she tries, unsuccessfully, to lick her own nipples. Her lipstick is heavy and her rouge is too thick. She climbs to the stage knees first, where the lesbians have just finished. She strips and sits on the edge and spreads her legs for everyone to see inside of her. This happens sometimes.
    If I had the courage of conviction I would ask Toine why he wants me to stay when we are only days away from when he moves out. He knows I would stay if he would stay with me. Since that night he never walks to work with me and we don’t have dinner together anymore. I told him I was sorry and he waved away my apology. “Don’t apologize for other people,” he said. We still see each other in the evenings. His jacket is open now and his shirt unbuttoned at the top. He wants me to stay in that apartment alone so he can come and check on me. Toine likes misery. We all like different things.
    Hank returns from the back wearing the gorilla suit, waving around the big plastic penis and the crowd is laughing and clapping. The man the American woman came with, her husband I guess, watches her on the stage. He looks like Peter O’Toole, a thin mustache stuck across his upper lip. Hank gets down in front of the lady and enters her with the gorilla dick.
    “Look at that,” Toine says. “An American being fucked by a gorilla.” The lady puts her hands against his chest and puckers her lips. Music is playing loudly and people are clapping. The woman is clawing at the mask until it comes off and she sees Hank’s black face and screams. He looks to the laughing crowd and smiles sheepishly. She struggles out from under him.
    “That’s what I love about you Americans,” Toine says. “You’ll fuck a gorilla before a black.”
    “That lady,” I say. I want to say something so profane that it cripples her but I can’t find the right words. The day after Jessie left I went to see Adel and gave her half of what I had. She was wearing a white body suit and asked how I knew her name and I said Toine told me. She said everybody knew her name so it didn’t matter.
    “I’m not going to take my clothes off for you,” she said. “You’re like a dog.” Then she fashioned a collar and a leash around my neck and led me down the stairs. She took me to a room below street level, with linoleum walls, where there was a changing table and a crib. I laid naked on the changing table and she smeared me in Vaseline then dressed me in large