I knew a girl with a knocked-up face, I said, who are you to thieve around my features? She was a scam artist, a hungry-good-for-nothing scam artist. I had to reach my hand inside of her and pull all the stolen parts out. Shame, they were covered in the matter of her body, which was sick with wanting and her pathetic wormish urge.
Now, with dirty hands, I take what’s mine and go home. I’m not as weak as I used to be. I don’t believe in thieving; I do believe in tricks, but only when they’re as well-played as something heard on WQXR. Thank god for the dawn. My reclaimed things are sitting on old newspapers in the backseat. No doubt I have more work ahead, but the morning road is easy, and my way is clear. It’s hard to imagine a girl could be so stupid as to steal, but I was stupid, too, only I grew up and made myself a woman out of it. I left her body behind; who cares, she’ll put herself together again. I could have stayed back to see her empty face, the way she’d play surprised when she finds all my things removed from her weak and clammy, otherwise embarrassing grasp. Selfish, selfish like a spoiled baby weaned on spoiled milk. I nearly cause a pileup on the FDR. I can’t stand spoilage. It is my moral duty to give it punishment.
Something smells like stale beer in that sweet, high-functioning alcoholic way. Is that the stench of her misplaced desire? Must be. Spoiled, I’m telling you. Thinking I owed it to her. Thinking I had to be sorry.
Do you blame me? You are soft with indignation. You didn’t watch me make my way out of nothing, you didn’t see how hard I had to fight to have a form. You’d be just as guarded if you knew the worth of things like these. No, not decorations, these backseat items are what make me. It was not a petty crime, she was a thief of livelihoods, see. Had she not a self to sink her own teeth into? Don’t put her emptiness on me. I can’t take you seriously for as long as you believe that everyone’s worth sparing. Spares are only good for busted tires and I’m driving smoothly down this road. If she had a name, then I don’t know it. I certainly don’t care. See, you do believe in infallibility! I’ll hold you to it; I will kill the angels. I will break them down and decompose their good-natured matrices of organic matter, in doing so I will expose their battery acid machinations, all their foul conspiracies. There’s nothing I hate more than a fleshy falsehood making nice with all my dreams. So don’t look so hurt, you’re better than that. The beast with the face of a man is no match for an ego so corpulent, so well-fed, so saturated as mine.