Part IV Motion Without Cease? Chapterlet I

IV. Motion without Cease

Ginger peach wild honey cedar flavor making her swallow, Kennedy presses her whole face into the darkness of Star’s pushed up skirt and gives a little shake as she hears a voice calling out Star’s other name in the nighttime behind her. This little shake was more to catch her breath, actually, and break the seal, but it seems to have done the trick because Star’s belly is jerking like ah, ooh, ah, and Star—Kennedy can tell without even having to look that Star is making her O face, the one she only makes for big ones, with those weird tapering but plump lips with their smeared lipstick like eating each other up and writhing against her face like snakes mating somewhere up overhead. Then Star’s pubis bumps Kennedy’s upper lip in a really satisfying way like she knows she’s going to have a fat lip from it, but even though it’s satisfying Kennedy’s not sure the gesture was automatic like the spasming belly was and can imagine that it was probably dismissive, like her cue to stop. She lets go of the thong she’s been holding to the side and watches it not quite slide back into place as she rocks back on her heels and then up, aching. Knees, neck, back, lips, fingers, lips. Aching.
Kennedy tries to kiss Star, but Star turns so she only gets her on the cheek and tries not to pout as Star wipes off her kiss. Sometimes she likes to be kissed on the mouth after, sometimes not. Anyway, it’s no skin off Kennedy’s dick as she roots around in the damp at the base of the creepy statue with the slack like O face that statues sometimes have, especially statues of women, or maybe that’s just Kennedy. She thinks of the ecstasy of St. Theresa. She finds her purse and brushes some dew off it before looking in her bag. She checks the time on her phone. No messages. Star’s not even making eye contact, looking over Kennedy’s head. Kennedy knows she’s thinking about Her, so she just leaves. She’s got to meet Henry and Tino anyway. And maybe later play Go with the Sad Man.
She always feels really weird and cramped and generally unpleasant when she thinks about Go and the whole Go situation after she’s just Xed Star, but then she thinks about how amazing Star is and gets all desperately clammy in her head and her thighs get all tense and thinks that there’s no way in hell she’ll give any of it up. She’ll die first. Anyway, she’s gotta get paid and complicating the whole Star, Sad Man, Henry, Tino situation would be bad news for everyone involved so she just shoves everything down and just boxes it and thinks about getting paid and moving product.
Downtown, she gets to Henry’s and takes the freight elevator up the fourth and gets out. She can hear Tino yelling before the elevator even stops. He’s yelling his usual bullshit about turf and expansion, and she can tell that Henry’s not even listening by hysterical Tino’s getting. Sure enough, she turns the corner into the office and the Sad Man’s sitting there, playing Go, and Henry’s kinda watching him play by himself with that sickly smile that makes his lips disappear even further into the burnt parts of the skin around his mouth. Tino’s forehead is bright purple, and if Kennedy couldn’t hear him yelling, she’d probably think that he was choking, she thinks, looking at how the color pushes all the way around the forehead and makes the tips of his ears wildly differently colored before disappearing down the neck of his shirt. Tino’s spitting, he’s so angry. Kennedy can tell this is pretty much it. But, right then, of course, The Sad Man notices her, making some crack about how Tino’s secretary is there and maybe could she take dictation because the Sad Man does not want to feel the sadness of these words being lost in the ceaseless flow of time. That’s pretty much how he always talks.
But then so Tino turns around and tells her to get her shit they’re leaving, and she says “I just got here,” but he doesn’t even slow down, he just grabs her arm and heads out into the hall. His grip hurts Kennedy’s arm, but she doesn’t complain. She has like a cartoon like image of her coming along behind Tino like a balloon on a string as he charges toward the stairs. The echoes in the room are wild with his almost running and her stumbling to not get pulled off her feet. She manages not to fall as he drags her down the stairs and through the parking lot and into the car.
He puts the keys in the ignition but doesn’t start the car. He rolls his window down and lights a cigarette. She can see he’s calmer now. He takes a long drag and talks out the smoke. “Henry’s retiring.”
Kennedy says, “That why you were so pissed?”
“No.” He takes another drag. “He won’t front me the cash to buy in with his supplier. Thinks the business should go to the Chang kid.”
“Well, ‘the Chang kid’ is in the family.” She knows that they went to school together and that calling him kid is just one of Tino’s ways of trying to assert control over a seemingly random universe, is Kennedy’s private take on the whole epithet.
“And I’m not?” He’s working himself back up again.
“Hell, no. You’re not even Chinese.” She shivers a little. It’s getting colder in the car because of the window being down.
“Neither is the philosopher.” The philosopher is what everybody calls the Sad Man. Kennedy only calls him the Sad Man when no one’s listening.
“The philosopher isn’t looking to buy into a Triad franchise while not being a Triad—let alone not being Chinese.” This is, looking back, probably what got Kennedy started thinking about how she could make her own move, really.
“I’m gonna go see that Chang kid.” Tino’s not even listening anymore. Kennedy thinks he probably stopped listening to anyone else a long time ago.
“Whatever,” she says, “drop me at my house.” Kennedy knows what going to see someone normally entails and decides that she’d rather be home reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles for her chapter quiz on Monday. Not to mention that she’s got the Trig/Stat/Functions test review to finish.
“No, you’re coming. You want to be a part of this or not?” He doesn’t even hear her say no, not really, she doesn’t really want to have anything to do with him or his “moves” or his “visits” and most of his not hearing could be put down to not caring, but probably some of it is caused by his diesel Mercedes’s engine waking up.