Jennifer wakes up in the driver’s seat of a Lamborghini, a lime green lambo, her favorite shade of any color, and the glowing dashboard light is turned on. She is waiting for an illegal poker game to commence, and she loses track of the time. She loves losing track of the time, the battery is dead. Her money is young, her lungs hurt, and it’s dark outside already. Everyone is talking about how dark outside it is already. She looks up at the one streetlamp and the cloudless sky through black tinted glass. The sun roof. The stars glow brighter in the desert, they seem to know you better out here. Jennifer does not believe in God but she believes in consciousness. She believes in horror and consciousness. The doors to the lambo open like the wings of a dragonfly. Jennifer steps out on the dark pavement as though leaving a crash site or a glowing spaceship and the whip is not even hers. There is no speed she cannot reach, there is no room she does not belong in, there is no milieu she cannot tend to. She bends down and puts a night rock in her pocket.
Being Blind cuts you off from the world, being Deaf cuts you off from other people. She has this phrasing, this very specific wording on a poster in her room forever on the wall of her mind. Jennifer is the only Deaf person she knows but she knows herself like she knows the back of her hand. She needs people, this has been decided, she has decided. She walks around the bodega like it’s a museum fiending for Coke Zero and salty snacks, rubbing her hands together because it’s so fucking cold. Naps dehydrate her, sleep marks ripple all over her body underneath her big hoodie and black jeans.
Jennifer slides a tube of cookie dough, salt and vinegar potato chips, and a Coke Zero on the glass counter. Rolls of scratch tickets waterfall underneath. Bright, fluorescent lights buzz above them.
The clerk looks at all the items.
Whose car is that?
Jennifer signs, I stole it. I can steal anything you can imagine.
What are you saying now?
Jennifer tears a page out of her notebook. She writes a note with a sharpie and folds it in half.
The clerk opens up the note and it reads, Daddy’s. There is also a happy face.
Jennifer signs, I fuck raw and I eat raw cookie dough.
The clerk says, What?
Jennifer pays with a twenty-dollar bill, waves goodbye, and leaves without the change. Her face never changes when she talks to hearing people. She keeps the same energy, the same exact audacity, the same face. She pops open the cardboard cookie dough tube. Classic chocolate chip.
Spencer taps her on the shoulder and Jennifer turns around with a big mouthful of cookie dough. Spencer has a fresh bloody nose and there is a dirty bundled wad of one-hundred-dollar bills sticking out of his denim jacket pocket. His smile is from ear to ear, his eyes are bloodshot and blue. The yellow moon shines on the planet and the desert town.
He signs, You fuck raw, now?
Jennifer signs, I eat raw cookie dough.
She doesn’t stop and reaches for another bite.
She speaks in her voice, I eat raw cookie dough, bitch.
◆
Cassie hates it when someone is being fake, just be real, she can tell when someone does not know true hunger in their bones. True hunger is forced upon you. The chosen one. Cassie fucks drunk in a koi pond. The water is freezing cold. The koi shimmer with gold and orange luminescence even in the dark. Palm trees sway between her face and the sky. Dead, absent fish eyes. The full moon is a whole bag of cocaine. She has a C-section with no health insurance and names her daughter Jennifer. Cassie’s best friend, or former best friend, who has now long since abandoned her, is named Jennifer. Cassie smokes a pack a day, no brand loyalty, living paycheck to paycheck, a waitress, a cashier, an office manager. She learns the slow art of talking to herself and even has a phrase she repeats over and over again to herself: Come test me.
It becomes clear her daughter cannot hear her. It’s as though a wine glass falls in her mind and shatters on the floor. Jenny is two years old. Cassie throws a wine glass against the wall in her living room and watches Jenny, her baby girl, and Jenny does not move. Jenny already has a head full of hair and Cassie can feel the softness in her hands still. Cassie walks on glass and goes to her bedroom and shuts the door for hours. When Cassie comes back out, Jenny is asleep on the floor, and Cassie treads blood all over the apartment on the cheap carpet, pacing back and forth. Scars on her feet, a scar on her abdomen. The TV plays The Lion King.
◆
The worst thing the universe could do is to give Jennifer a reason to riot and kill shit. Give her one reason to kill shit and she will take it, she needs only one good reason to kill shit. If you burn her, if you cross her, if you show some kind of blatant disrespect, she will deliver an immediate reaction and make you watch. Queen kerosene. She will burn shit down. At the root of all anger is unmet desire, someone starving and stranded, someone slighted too often. Jennifer ducks her head down in the basement and takes a visible deep breath in her passage. She walks like she is being filmed. Low ceilings and bad lighting are some of the devils she knows. They are some of her best friends, too. Jennifer has a flask of bourbon on a chain in her jean pocket and she takes a shot on her way in the dark of the hallway. This shit always wins. She loves drinking on a nearly empty stomach, the way the hot glow spreads throughout her whole body. The room she walks into vibrates, you can see it, the dust shakes off the walls. There is a train passing nearby, shaking the building. Four big men sit at a poker table. They have a shotgun there and handguns stacked next to their chips. Gold plate handles. Green, black, red, and white poker chips.
Someone is all in already.
A man is yelling, a man in black denim overalls, Jennifer can see the veins on his neck. He seems like the leader or something, the way he always moves and visibly asserts himself.
The man is standing up from his seat. He pounds on the table. Brief, small vibrations.
Spencer signs, It’s the train. He points through the wall. But Jenny already knows.
Ancient dust falls to the floor and hardwood. Asbestos and dark debris. All these things move in the air.
Jennifer can see everything in slow motion.
Jennifer has twenty-thousand dollars in cold hard cash in her pine green Louis Vuitton duffel bag. It hangs and swings from her two strong fingers. The bag looks good.
She drops the Louis Vuitton duffel bag flat on the table. She moves with great spatial awareness like she has been here before, but she has not. She moves as though she can sense anything that moves in the room, which is impossible. The table shakes, the poker chip towers collapse, and Jennifer can feel the vibration. The men look at the poker chips and then her. They look at the Louis Vuitton duffel bag.
She can’t hear, right? Says the man in black denim overalls.
Jennifer uses her voice, I can read lips.
The man in black denim overalls does not look at Jennifer. He looks at Spencer and then he looks at the handguns on the table.
She can’t hear, right? The man in black denim overalls taps his ear. Exaggerated.
Jennifer clenches her teeth inside her mouth.
Spencer says, Her name is Jennifer.
Jenny imagines gore.
Spencer says, We brought the money. All in twenties, like you asked. Let’s fucking go.
◆
Chef’s kiss. The man in the black denim overalls makes a gesture in the air as though he is saying, Chef’s kiss. Something is beautiful. Something is absolutely perfect. Like a chef’s kiss. He looks at Jennifer and then waves his hands in the air like a madman like he is grabbing a woman’s ass. Most people run away from danger but Jennifer does not scare easily. She looks right into the eyes, she looks right through him. He has a demeanor that would set off a security alarm, something about him is really wrong and disturbing, Jennifer thinks, he rarely blinks.
Almost all her money is gone, Jennifer is terribly short stacked. The men are playing with their pocket knives open, fidgeting and appearing restless as fuck. Jennifer is wondering if they’re all normally like this, if they usually behave this way. Body language is something everyone speaks but no one can read nor translate worth shit. If you can see yourself acting a fool, replayed back to you, over and over again, what a world that would be.
Jennifer imagines stabbing the men with a steak knife. She wants them to stop staring at her. The blade would go right through their hands, their bones would break, & everything torn and broken would stick to the knife and the table.
Jennifer has pocket aces.
An ace in diamonds and an ace in hearts. It is a pretty hand.
Her real face is her poker face.
Jennifer taps the table to check, slow-playing her hand.
After Jennifer wins the pot, she says in her voice, Come test me. Come test me.
She celebrates like life depends on it.
Dead faces bask at the table.
All the chips come her direction.
She doubles her money in one hand and wins respect at the table.
The body language simply changes. All the men sit up straight and polished.
Do you want some food, girl? Says the man in black denim overalls.
I’ve had food already, Jennifer signs.
She says in her voice, Raw cookie dough.
Life leaves her body and goes right back into her.
Like a needle through a pinhole.
Fear is a lie and her heart hits the ground.
Jennifer still has her night rock in her pocket.
Without looking at her cards, Jennifer puts more chips in the middle of the table.
The man in the black denim overalls asks her, You raise?
Jennifer says, I raise, bitch.
◆
Jenny is an only child. A lot of her time is spent alone. A smart girl. Most of her hours are spent in her head, whole days with her nose in a book on the floor in her room or playing her Nintendo 64 or Sony Playstation. Being Blind cuts you off from the world, being Deaf cuts you off from other people. Jenny loves connecting the red, white, and yellow wires from her Sony Playstation to the back of her TV, she loves the little breeze that comes through the window at night when she plays her video games.
Her eyes grow tired, which is something she can repeat. She loves using every ounce of her strength over the course of a normal day. Twenty-four little hours. Jenny has a dream of being put to the test. Wear her down to the bone. The room feels lighter after turning off the television, the muscles in her face melt away. If she did not know better, she would say she was floating or happy.
Cassie works twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day, working at the local Kmart for her morning shift, and then at the all-night Dairy Queen inside the Kmart for her evening shift. All day on her feet, thousands of customers come across her way. There is a calm in the world that she can no longer tap into. There is nothing she is looking forward to, there is not a view or a mountaintop she is seeking in life, and her body is breaking down. Her once steady nature is now rocky and sharp, the sinking feeling touches and fills everything. Something catches up to Cassie. All the bad habits are collecting. Two weeks ago, Cassie loses fifteen thousand dollars on a single hand on a cold bluff. She owes real money to really bad men. She knows what a bare knife feels like pressed against her neck.
Placing a bet always feels like the hottest shit in the world to Cassie. Hotter than head, skin on skin, fucking raw in the car. Winning a hand, beating the house, or stealing the pot is better than getting off for Cassie. Better than coming. But she never wins, she has not won in years.
A man in denim overalls waits with an empty shopping cart in the Children’s aisle. Plastic toys and action figures. Plush wild animals and teddy bears. People move all around him, waves and waves of sad and happy people. He has been pacing all day around the Kmart, going through every aisle a few times over. He has been watching Cassie for most of the day. He holds her in his periphery, blending into the crowd.
Cassie makes a loud noise, clamping the metal gate to the Dairy Queen into the floor, and leaving for the day. She puts on her big headphones and plays Mariah Carey. Already deep in the dark of the parking lot, she is just outside the glow of the Kmart, and there is someone standing next to her car. His face comes into her vision and her eyes go big. His eyes don’t blink. Your body freezes when you know you cannot run away from danger not when you see lightning, but when you feel thunder.
◆
Jenny breaks every single bone in the man’s face in her dream. The dream is only fast motion and blurred violence, Jenny always wakes up remembering almost nothing other than breaking a man’s face. She has a recurring dream of breaking a man’s face, a man she does not know.
Monks train for years to walk on water. They bang their fingers and toes, hands and feet, against rocks and concrete for years to get their bodies as tough as steel. Mind over matter and muscle. When she wakes up, she realizes she needs to get the hell out of Dodge. She needs to get the fuck out of her house. At least for the night, she needs people. The balm of other people.
The hardest lesson to learn is how not to feel sorry for herself. She learns one of the best ways to be alone is not to feel sorry for yourself. How to be alone, how to reinvent the wheel every day. The earth spins a little slower, the gravity feels more grounding when you stop caring and seek no outside validation. Old souls know this in their bones. You can kill things off in your life to have peace in your heart. Make your body an all-seeing eye, a lucid stone that floats.
Jenny rides her bike uphill in the dark to the University of Redlands. Brutal hot days and cool nights reign; there is heaven in hell in the wind in the desert. She wears her favorite tight Incubus T-shirt underneath her black zip-up hoodie. The shirt feels like a best friend or a secret weapon and putting it on feels like flipping a switch for Jenny. Pretty girl, beast mode, tight around the chest mode.
She feels powerful and ready for love and violence. She is learning the art of going to rock shows alone again and pretends she can see through walls. The stadium lights are turned on like arriving UFOs, the air is cold and perfect. The campus rests on a grassy hill in the middle of the desert. Jenny tucks her hair behind her ear and walks through the crowd, the waves and waves of eager, young people. Everyone looks just like her, private yet excited, and all the boys look her up and down. She wonders if anyone else here is Deaf.
She finds a place on the side of the concrete bleachers and giant palm trees, and sits on the dead grass. She hugs her knees and the wind washes her face. Jenny loves how the stage lights hit the fog, how the crowd clusters.
Set Phasers to Stun. Taking Back Sunday. All the young bodies below scream and jump around. Bright light moves through the crowd. The lead singer strangles himself with the microphone cord and screams, too, the wire cord wrapped around his neck a few times over. Jenny knows all the songs.
Jenny stands up, drops her backpack to the ground, and takes off her black hoodie. Some of the boys watch her. She takes out and blows up a green latex balloon from her bag with her lips and the green balloon grows bigger than her head. She runs closer to the crowd and feels the heavy vibrations from the speakers move from the balloon to her hands.
The ground shakes a little too, Jenny can feel everything. She holds the balloon like a glowing orb and closes her eyes. She rocks the fuck out. She bangs her hair in the air, jumping up and down, up and down, dancing alone. Jenny moves like no one can break her heart, she moves like she can stop a speeding train dead in its tracks. Yards away from the mosh pit, the earth quakes, and Jenny is unbothered, completely free, and untethered. Love feels something like unfinished business. There is another world that does not know her waiting inside this one.
Spencer comes up from behind her and taps her shoulder. His shirt is tight, too, and his shoulders are broad.
Jenny opens her eyes.
He puts his thumb to his chest and twinkles his fingers. He signs, Cool.
Spencer signs, Beautiful. Not blinking.
Little flickers spark behind her eyeballs, perfect lighting bolts for Jenny.
Jenny signs, Hello.
Spencer says, I dream in Hell, too.
◆
Jennifer wins another pot and plays heads up. The men make some kind of signal to each other, using eye contact and a little nod. Another freight train passes by and shakes the whole building. The good mood at the poker table is all but dead, the beer is all gone and demolished. The man in denim overalls reaches over and touches Jennifer’s soft hand. I think we should go into the next room, he says.
Jennifer understands every word that leaves his lips, she can see his intentions. She clenches her other hand into a fist under the table. The men all stand and gesture to Spencer to do the same. They are not asking, they are demanding. Everything changes in a moment, the heart picks up pace. Cardiac arrest is suddenly possible.
They go to the next room down the dark hallway and the floor is covered in plastic. The door rattles when you open it. The blue couch is wrapped in plastic, the floor is covered in cut open, ripped open black garbage bags. The room is more washroom than living room, with large sinks and black metal tool cases stacked against the far wall. Jennifer thinks, This is a very bad place. The walls smell like flesh and blood, sweat and paint.
With his back turned to Jennifer, the man in denim overalls says, This is a bad place.
He turns around to face them and says, You came to a bad place.
Jennifer spares a spider’s life, crawling on her arm.
The spider crawls away down her leg, onto the floor.
The spider looks up at Jenny.
Jenny feels connected to all life, obliged to keep the balance.
Spencer says, What is this?
The man in denim overalls says, Sometimes you enter a room and it’s as though you enter a dream. I dream when I come into this room. This room is my reputation.
The man in denim overalls pulls out black gloves from one of the tool chest cases and he takes his time. They look like butcher’s gloves, they go to his elbow, still covered in blood.
Jennifer can read his lips but stops paying attention. Even more so, she watches his hands and anticipates and waits for any sudden movements. They came through the one entrance in the room, the one exit. Jennifer sees no others.
The man in denim overalls says, You bitch. You stupid bitch. You’re going to learn my name in this room.
The three other men move toward Spencer with bare hands. The floorboards creak, the plastic ruffles and stretches.
She is a God, she is a hermit. She has been waiting for this moment her whole life. Jennifer has her night rock in her pocket.
Spencer is a sicko, too. He has always been a weird, beautiful sicko. He is always a few steps ahead of everyone else in the room. Spencer and Jennifer have been robbing places like this for months. Two masterminds, two sides of the same coin. Revenge, revenge.
Spencer pulls out an ice pick and stabs one of the men in the ear. Blood spatters on her sneakers. Jennifer can see the man is screaming for dear life, the color red pouring from his ear. Spencer pulls out a pistol and shoots the other two men in the leg, then chest, then head. Gore is shocking every time, like a flash from a camera.
The man in denim overalls stands frozen in space. He doesn’t have a gun in his hand like Spencer, he doesn’t have a night rock like Jennifer.
I am Cassie’s daughter, Jenny says in her angry voice.
Do you hear me, you piece of shit?
I am Cassie’s daughter.
The man’s eyes burst open.
Jennifer runs at the man with her night rock.
She hits him in the face with her night rock.
The man falls to the floor and screams and Jennifer follows him.
On top of him, she hits him again in the face with her night rock.
She keeps going until his face is smashed cherry pie, and her arm burns like the dickens.
Jenny thinks, This is my night rock. It represents me and everything inside me. Everything that loves me, everything that does not love me. All in this rock.
No one can hear Jenny’s thoughts but Jenny.
She speaks only when she wants to.
Spencer taps Jenny on her shoulder and she is breathing hard.
Lungs burning like lava.
He has a duffel bag of dirty cash strapped to his shoulder.
More than they came with.
Spencer says, I dream in Hell, too, baby. I am made for you.
He signs, I love you so much.