JUPITER BY HILLARY COMMINS

November, 2005

          I am being stalked by two men—one carries a brick, the other, a wrench named Pierre. The man with the brick sends me love letters. He calls me from pay phones. “Don’t be mad,” he coos, “just because I have dreams of crushing all your limbs, just because I want to hang them in my window.” The man with the wrench is not so subtle. He climbs the building and leers into my bedroom. “I’m gonna get you,” he says, winking toothlessly. The whole thing is very funny to him. “Pierre can’t wait!” he cries, as he tips his beret and flaps screaming into the night.

          The stalking has changed everything. I can’t admire a sculpture or enjoy a conversation. I can’t even sip my five-o’clock cosmopolitan without those sudden and nauseating waves rolling up to remind me of my predicament. I scan the city streets. Teeth and shoes and flashes of hair. I begin to shake. Scarves ripple behind arms, blades of water in the gutters. Everything grows so still, so immense and distorted. From a park bench I see the man with the wrench gazing at me. He laughs while I grope the sidewalks for my car.

          The drive home, over the bridge, is always cold and fraught with questions. At home, Jupiter yips and jumps up to lick my face. His tail wags furiously. “What a good doggie you are,” I mutter, “good doggie.” When the phone rings, everything grows still again. The ladies on the wall smile from their frames, gloved hands wrapped about a satin pocketbook, a locket, a red cape. Jupiter stares at me. I decide to answer. It’s the man with the brick, crying. “I’m so sad,” he wails. “Sad because . . . what will the world do when I take you to a fire-lit beach and smash your skull beside the waves?” I lock myself in my windowless bathroom and bathe for hours while Jupiter whines at the door.

          Even at the rock concert, the man with the wrench lurks in the aisles. My friends--the kind, familiar faces I can't help but stare through, nodding--don't know me. They hand me beer in plastic cups and say, “Earth to Monica, earth to Monica, come in Monica.” They laugh about golden things, yesterday’s fog, someone’s stupid baby. My eyes dart through the rows. I see the man with the wrench holding a red snow-cone in one hand, Pierre in the other. His licking gestures are obscene. He has one of those malleable faces capable of contorting into a mockery of many emotions. Now he displays—wolf gawking at fat chicken. I watch Debbie biting her fingernails, talking about the flaws of Ingmar Bergman. Then she and the rest of them are pointing at the star-dappled sky. “See that red star there?” says Lola. “It’s Jupiter.” They’re high, leaning into one another. The man with the wrench waggles his fingers. “I’m gonna get you,” he mouths in the distance. The rest of the concert is a blur, a ruddy haze.

          To top it all off I’m dating this dull Korean guy who works at a bakery. At thirty, he attends junior college and still frequents arcades. He’s hyper-sensitive and will-less and he laughs at everything. Even so, I’ve considered asking him to move in with me, a chest to curl into when the man with the wrench comes tapping at the window. On Wednesdays we go to Larry Blake’s for steak sandwiches and pints of Anchor Steam. Tito talks about Indie bands named Cock Blister and Dead Jennifer while gnawing at his meat. The drone of his voice fills the space between us while my eyes scan the sunny streets. Something about the waitresses’ mouths, the shade of afternoon sun along those wooden tables, dust motes illuminated and flying—it all makes me sadder than I’ve ever been. This is it, I decide one day. I’m so tired of hiding.

          Jupiter tilts his head as I step onto the toilet lid. A glass half-filled with water sits on the scale. The water churns as I ceremoniously throw aspirin into the glass. Jupiter stretches his legs out before him, dragging his claws over the paisley linoleum, then he lowers his rump, sphinx-like, to watch me toss the pills. With every pitch I recite my death chant: You have nothing in your life but fear. The idea is that I’ll chug the stuff and do myself in, and when I’ve stopped running and hiding and the man with the brick and the man with the wrench find me, blue and serene, coiled on the bathroom floor, they’ll know I’ve won. They may desecrate my corpse, but I’ll have journeyed beyond them, my soul hovering warmly over olive groves. I sit on the toilet and bring the glass to my mouth. One chalky sip and I’m retching into the sink.

          I trudge through the next few weeks, enjoying the way my foul mood wipes the smiles from the faces around me. The man with the wrench has grown so gleeful he can hardly stand to see me without wetting his pants. And the man with the brick, he’s begun to make actual appearances. Walking down Market on my lunch-break, I notice the slope of his huge shoulder, his long, pock-marked face slack and staring behind a metallic window.

          One night I’m alone in the fluorescence of my office, drinking cold coffee. My fingers fly, clicking over the keyboard. Suddenly, the phone rings. The noise startles me, so much so that all at once my hands begin to shake. The fear I know so well climbs up my guts, through the brown silt of my anger, up and up, to where it lodges, as usual, in my throat. I pick up the phone, but it’s only Tito asking if I’d like to get some flicks and food and spend the night at his grimy apartment. I decline this offer and hang up. The hair on the back of my neck has begun to rise. The gray cubicles seem solid and empty, everything still as a photograph, the elevator doors, the black windows, the dead fern on Mr. Mackey’s cluttered desk. As the shades of black and gray elongate into shards, I close up, slip on my coat, and step into the wet streets.

          Past streetlamps and square slabs of concrete where the insane and the dirt-caked mutter and stare, I hurry toward my car. Sometimes the city provides a kind of safety. Pockets to slip inside, anonymity, spaces for escape. Tonight the immense buildings with their many windows overwhelm me. They loom jaggedly, seeming to lean toward the street.

          A grim discovery at Market and Beale: I’m being followed. The man with the wrench is lounging against a building. When he sees that I’ve noticed him, he slaps Pierre’s jaw into the palm of his gloved hand. I begin to run. He yelps and follows, his thin arms madly waving. Everything blurs into a black and amber haze. Cold brick and Muni wire, the wet leaves of the sycamore trees glinting like coins.

          We turn onto a winding stretch of sidewalk, gated on either side by a low transparent wall. Primordial ferns shiver in their concrete pots as we scramble past. I clutch my collar and the man with the wrench shrieks. Running past marble and brick and columns of glass. Through back-alleys, up and up, into the hills. The occasional headlights of cars shoot their mottled rays into the blue, peeking from the steep road-tops to glide wetly past us. Past sleeping flowers and closed houses. Higher, near the ocean and into the night-mist where the yellow moon hangs. Higher, the roar of air and the churning of dark water. The man with the wrench is howling. All at once, I run up against a massive stone wall. “Good!” cries the man the wrench. A ladder gleams in the moonlight. I run to it and begin to climb.

          Though my clogs keep slipping on the silver rungs, I find myself increasing the distance between us. The man with the wrench begins to curse. We climb and climb until at last we’ve reached the top, a roof of sorts, flat and wide and made of stone. When I step onto the roof, a swell of exhaustion rolls over me. How long can I keep this up? What exactly am I seeking to preserve in all this running? I slow my pace, considering the Levite’s concubine, Joan of Arc, lovely Sharon Tate. Death by wrench can’t be so bad.

          The man with the wrench pulls himself onto the roof. When he’s just a few feet behind me, I turn toward him and assume a posture of sacrifice. With my chest thrown out and my arms back, I meet his stare. It’s the first time I’ve seen him up so close.

          He looks at me with disgust in his eyes. His gray lips pull back from his gums. Then, he drops Pierre and places a dirty hand on his abdomen while raising the other with theatrical flourish. He bows deeply. Then he swivels on his booted feet, steps to the ladder and is gone.

          I stand there shivering for a moment, feeling oddly deserted. The wind whips my clothes and hair. I climb down the ladder and wander the many blocks to my car.

          Driving home across the bridge with the windows down, staring at the passing lights. The stars are vivid tonight, white and dimly pulsing. The thought of my brown apartment, of a long, warm sleep in a locked house, Jupiter’s unconditional adoration—it all makes me sadder than I’ve ever been. My exit comes and goes.

          Past the black hills and fire-burnt homes, through the Caldecott tunnel to where the suburbs lie. I find myself on a quiet and leafy street. Neat lawns gleam darkly behind demure borders of lava rock. I observe a stop sign. Glance to the left, to the right, then straight ahead. The man with the brick is standing in front of my car. My shriek brings tears to his eyes. We stare at one another. Then he leans back, brick in hand, as if to smash the thing through my windshield.

          I close my eyes and wait. I envision the splintering glass, large hands pulling me from the jagged shards. But after a time I open my eyes to find him still standing there, poised as before, though now his face looks bewildered. He drops the brick.

          “Son of a bitch!” I say, and step on the gas.

          He flips over the hood with a terrible thunder of metal and bone. As his head cracks against the wind-shield, I glimpse his bearish eyes, mild and infinitely lost. In an instant he’s down and moaning on the concrete. I shift into reverse and roll my car over him. Obscene gurgling noises, a shuddering of limbs, the shadows of leaves quivering like flames across the silent houses. I shift into drive and crush him again. Then again, in reverse. “Son of a bitch,” I say, as my car wobbles over the man. With a screaming of rubber, I speed off toward the highway.

          Sunlight blazes through the drapery.

          Distant traffic sounds, as if from a seashell, the roar of Thursday’s street-sweeping. A neighbor laughs, another pounds nails into the wall. Jupiter raises his sleepy head from the bed’s foot and yawns as I glance at the alarm clock: 11:11.

          Four hours late, on the bridge, driving to work amidst brilliant sunshine. Without provocation, a blond girl in the white Volkswagen ahead of me pays for my two-dollar toll.

          At work people seem concerned. They bring me bagels and chocolate. And Tito, after taking BART to visit me on my lunch break, he drops his frail shoulders with a grin and hands me two azaleas. Even Mr. Mackey has come to set a cup of raspberry-hazelnut coffee on my desk. “You look like you need it, honey,” he tells me before hurrying off.

          Home again, gazing into the hardwoods, cosmopolitan in hand. The ladies on the wall smile beneath the radio jazz. Tight white teeth, the drone of Jupiter’s snoring, xylophone notes tumbling like buckets full of stars. The sky blackens, but the phone stays silent—no messages, no tapping at the window. Nothing, nothing at all.

          Odd things have begun to happen.

          While doing my dishes one Saturday morning, I look out the window to see the man with the wrench sorting through my trash. Pierre hangs from a holster on his belt. I’ve seen him several times since our confrontation on the roof, sitting on a street bench, his face passing from a bus window. But now his presence has ceased to torment me. Usually we ignore one another. This morning, however, at the trash bin, as if sensing my uneasy awareness, he turns to stare. All at once he hurls a rotten tomato. It splatters against my window. I break a glass into the sink. My hands begin to shake. The man with the wrench disappears.

          A week later, I start receiving phone messages. Every night now the machine is blinking. Once, there were nineteen calls, most of them hang-ups. But between the mundane greetings from friends and such, approximately three of the messages contained disconcerting sounds: a throaty whimpering, someone coughing, an incoherent whisper. All of this beneath the industrial whir and throb of some factory environment. I listen to the unholy music while Jupiter cowers behind the sofa.

          So I decide—enough is enough.

          I give notice to my landlord. I sell my furniture. I dye my hair, bleaching the chestnut until it’s almost white. Lastly, I give Jupiter to the welfare mom down the block.

          The contents of my savings account, plus my security deposit, plus the several hundred dollars I manage to “borrow” from friends is more than enough to cover my plane ticket and several months of living expenses.

          Life in Baja.

          It’s harder than I thought. For one, there’s the language barrier. I’ve been studying Spanish with Luis, a broody teen who lives in a trailer by the sea of Cortez with his balding grandmother. I can say, estoy feliz, and y me siento a salvo, and y puedo tomar otro cosmopolitan, por favor. Most of my passable living comes from helping Nancy the American at her restaurant. Twice a week, I clean the cabanas at a hotel in Los Frailes.

          Despite the harsh beauty of this place, dry roads winding toward the glistening waves, reptiles, rocks and dust, I often find myself feeling sad. Twice now I’ve encountered a scorpion in my bed. And the other day, while walking along the beach, I cut my foot on a dead blowfish. But more than that.

          Drinking in a lawn chair, staring at the dunes. At last, I’ve escaped. The man with the brick and the man with the wrench are gone. Still, I miss my dog, my apartment, the support of my friends. I even miss Tito. And the bustle and glow of the City.

          So it’s Sunday and I’m sweeping the pink bricks at Nancy’s place. Several cats lounge on the cane chairs, their tails languid between the slats. It’s late August—infernal temperatures and nothing of business. Janet and I endure the heat of the dying afternoon, that and the American soft-pop Nancy makes us play. We smoke hand-rolled cigarettes and drink cervezas, staring into space.

          I crap in the smelly stall, one eye on the massive dead spider someone left in the wall’s corner after squashing it there. When I emerge, Janet’s serving chips and salsa to a large Mexican woman in a black coat. Her worn hands rest on the table. Her neck is wrapped in scarves. I stare at her crooked profile, and then walk briskly past. My body stays close to the wall.

          Janet’s smashing avocados by the bar. I ask her: “Quien es esa mujer?” She shrugs. I peer around the wall. The woman pokes at her salsa with a broken chip. Though her face glistens with sweat, she’s buttoned her coat to the collar. She smiles. Her black shoulders begin to shiver. She turns her frame toward me, slowly, her meaty hands gripping the table’s edges, her old face a snarl of tangled flesh. I meet her barbed eyes, then grab my keys and my smokes and run out the back.

          Two pairs of shoes, two pairs of socks, one light coat, an apple. Some toiletries, a pound of coffee, a fifth of vodka. My hands do all the work, cramming essentials into a knapsack while my mind reels. Eight hundred dollars in a Mexican savings account. One-fifty more in a cigar box behind the stove. Twenty-nine bucks in my pocket. It’s a three hour drive from Cabo Pulmo to the airport. Be careful to avoid wandering livestock along the dark two-lane highway. At La Paz, purchase ticket to Italy. You’ve always preferred balmy vineyards to plateaus of rock. Once in Italy find—apartment, job, plastic surgeon. It’s time for a change, a real change this time. Look at the indigo sky. Look at the Mexican stars. See that red star, there, hovering above the dry palm? It’s Jupiter. Let it guide you. Let it guide you from fear. Let it guide you from vague sadness and long days. Let it guide you from shit, on toward Italian cobblestones, to the clean life with a new face and a new being, wine and turtlenecks and lovers on mopeds. Stop shaking! Ignore the scratching at the door. Ignore that hand turning the knob. Ignore the breathy chuckle at your back and stare at your star, stare at Jupiter, at Jupiter.

         But I can’t help it. I turn around.

         The old woman’s leering from the doorway as she opens her coat like a pair of raven’s wings to reveal an impressive collection of knives.

Hillary Commins is a writer and part-time English teacher born and raised in California. She received her BA in English literature (with a minor in creative writing) from UC Berkeley and an MFA in fiction from the University of Florida. She just completed a collection of short stories called The Pig Flower and is now at work on her first novel, Sea of Wax. Her most recent publication was in the Spring 2004 issue of the Las Vegas journal Rainbow Curve. She currently teaches English composition at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in San Francisco.