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If
Maggie knew one thing it was how to take a punch and if that taught
her anything it was how to give one. Violence had long lived close to
Maggie, violence had left its hideous mark upon her. She’d grown
accustomed to its presence.
Violence defined her.
Born she was from and into violent acts. Wanton mother lust conceived
Maggie, a child forever unloved, torn from suckling dead mother breast
as that pummelled corpse, face crushed, sex brutalized with fire and
steel, lay days upon the killing floor in a remote shed hidden by compost.
Dead mother delivered into catastrophe by the hands and feet of the
husband, not father, never father, who from his furious impotence murdered
lust mother as the child’s eyes watched and beheld all he could
contrive upon this woman. A man who paused but briefly, considering
if the child should survive, before he crawled and dragged his worthless
life under the steel wheels of the never slow eastbound express.
Maggie forever hated weak women.
Irma, blond angel, wasn’t weak.
Maggie/Irma weren’t weak women.
And for Maggie there came opportunities to turn violence inflicted away,
to guide its destructiveness. All she had to do was wait, patiently
wait for those opportunities to arrive and they always did.
Maggie only takes the afternoon through evening shift at the call centre.
Victimizing the elderly, shut ins and the vulnerable in the early hours
of each day is something that she has long lost any enthusiasm for.
The same can’t be said for Jane. For her every call made is a mark,
the easier the better. Hook ’em and reel ’em in; is how she
describes her efforts and the older, the more frail, the better. They
can’t remember shit, Jane would brag tossing the list of the fallen
at Maggie as they exchange places in the booth.
On this night, a cold, blustery, and thoroughly miserable time, Maggie
was down to her last two calls. She glanced again at the text of her
hustle script, “Good evening, my name is Margaret and I am calling
about a carpet cleaning service unlike any other. Could I…”
and she would drone on.
The collision against the back of her chair startled Maggie.
“The fucker is monitoring all the calls.” Jane was leaning
against the partition, she was drunk. Maggie’s anger at Jane’s
dissolute state faded quickly. Jane’s coat was unbuttoned, her
blouse, untucked had a dark stain down the front. The partition seemed
all that was holding her upright.
Maggie looked about quickly. No one seemed to notice Jane. Pulling a
chair from the next booth she pushed it toward Jane who fell into it
heavily. She belched, the sour stench of liquor wafted between them.
She looked at Maggie with watery unfocussed eyes.
“You knew that didn’t you?” Jane slurred the words, struggling
to tuck in her blouse. She stops for a moment looking at the stain before
unbuttoning the last two buttons pulling the shirt open revealing her
abdomen. She lays her open hand upon her whiter than white belly flesh.
Maggie glances toward the supervisors office and between the cubicles,
no one cares as the others at their phones engage, enrage and disturb
the anonymous at the end of the phone lists.
“Yeah,” Maggie snaps, “so the asshole listens, so what.”
Maggie just wants the night over with and glances again at the two remaining
calls she has to make.
“You don’t understand.” Jane undoes a third button revealing
more of herself. “It’s you he listens to, the things you say
that’s what he listens to whenever you’re working.” Jane
leans toward Maggie, drawing her closer, “He showed me that call
you made two days ago, the man in the apartment, remember, the guy with
no carpets. Maggie, we listened to it as we were…”
Jane pulls back into the chair, a lascivious grin distorting her face.
“Shit, Maggie you called the guy three times.”
Maggie removes the headset. “They all like listening, all the supers,
they like to sit in their offices and if something gets interesting
they… listen.”
As she finishes the sentence she rests her open hand on her crotch.
She pauses watching Jane sitting slumped in the chair her belly exposed.
“They fired you.”
Jane doesn’t need to say anything.
“Even after you slept with that little prick, he fired you, right?”
Maggie’s tone is unsympathetic.
“I don’t feel good.” Is the best Jane can muster in response.
Maggie leans over and begins buttoning Jane’s blouse. “It’s
going to be ok. Go home and I’ll call you later.”
Jane seems to have froze, not refusing, just failing to respond, to
even look up.
“Fuck it. Here’s the key to my place,” Maggie shoves
her apartment key into Jane’s coat pocket, “you know where
it is two streets over three down, left side, groundfloor, 101. You
got that?”
Jane nods and pulls herself to her feet.
“He likes to listen,” Maggie glances toward the closed supervisor’s
door. “and he thinks he’s safe in there.”
She gives the door the finger.
“Go.” She gives Jane a gentle nudge toward the exit.
Jane takes a step, her feet leaden from the liquor, stops, drifting
in place and turns to Maggie, shaking her head, holding the key out.
“I don’t want to go there.” Jane is frightened. “Here”,
she tries pushing the key back to Maggie.
“Whoa.” Maggie pushes Jane’s hand with the key aside.
“Why don’t you want to go?”
“She’s there. That… that beast.”
Maggie laughs, leaning back in her chair.
Jane stamps her foot, angry. “Don’t laugh. She’d dangerous.”
Maggie laughs again. “She’s dead. Janey its a, a photograph.
She’s not real.”
Stepping back toward Maggie, Jane leans against the desk and into the
woman still smiling up at her. “She’s fucking real to you
Maggie. She’s real to you.”
The key to Maggie’s apartment is set firmly on the table. Jane
still stands idling, drunk and waiting in front of Maggie who has not
taken her eyes off Jane.
“Sit down,” Maggie pulls at Jane’s sleeve and the woman
drops into the chair, legs akimbo, arms dangling over the side of the
chair as if she had passed out.
“Then sit here.” Maggie glances toward the supervisors door.
Nothing.
Jane suddenly shifts, pulling herself close to Maggie and whispers,
conspiratorially, “I think your full of shit, Maggie. Those aren’t
really her boots, the one’s you keep locked up in that closet.
Come on, tell me the truth.”
Maggie turned ever so slowly toward the woman in the chair beside her,
the expression that met Jane was one of controlled ferocity at being
challenged, questioned, suspected.
“You’ll go to my place and you’ll go right now.”
Maggie takes the key from the desk, opens Jane’s left hand and
pushes it firmly into her. “I’ll be home later. “
Jane says nothing, staring blankly at Maggie.
“I want to wear them. The boots.” Jane’s voice has gone
cold, “Irma’s boots, I want to wear them.”
“You?! You little snot! Not you or anyone like you!” Maggie
snaps, angered. “And you know why, don’t you?”
Jane starts to shift herself with the intent of getting up only to slump
back in place.
She knows.
It had been a long night of drinking. Maggie tended to do everything
with an over the top aggressiveness, including Darlene’s 40th birthday
party. As Maggie stumbled to a halt in front of her building, searching
for the key to her apartment with Jane in tow she continually mumbled
that she didn’t even like Darlene, her friends, her family or her
little fucking dog. Jane needed to use the bathroom, that’s all,
just let me take a leak and I’ll be on my way. If she said it once,
she said it half a dozen times, dancing from one foot to the other.
Maggie, key in hand, straightened, and with both arms around Jane’s
shoulder whispered quietly, “I’ve something to show you. You’ll
be….” She laughs stupidly, “fucking blown away.”
Inside the ground floor apartment Jane was struck by the spartan appearance
of the place, almost like no one actually lived in it. She wanted to
but didn’t comment on the fact that she could practically count
on one hand everything in the room; cot, small table, two chairs, and
floor lamp. There was only two other doors, bathroom and one with a
heavy padlock. There was no bedroom. On the wall next to the window,
framed behind glass were the embroidered words in a language Jane didn’t
recognize, at first: Tode durch den strang. On the faded wall beneath
were the words written in a black hand: Death by the rope. Jane took
the latter to be the translation of the former. She pretended not to
notice.
On her way to the bathroom Jane couldn’t resist an observation,
“You really need a raise Magg’s. I mean look at the place.”
She stops at the bathroom door, snaps on the light. “Furniture
baby, ambiance. You need ambiance.” Jane hikes up her coat and
dress, pulling her nylons and underwear down and with a sigh of serious
relief, settles onto the toilet.
Maggie says nothing, locking and latching her door. The blinds are down
and secured against intrusion.
On the peg behind the door she carefully hangs her coat.
Jane hasn’t closed the bathroom door as she noisily relieves herself.
She farts heavily into the bowl, giggles, and closes the door.
It took some effort but Jane finally managed to work the warped bathroom
door free finding Maggie sitting crosslegged on the floor next to the
open closet door. She was polishing a heavy black boot with a red and
black rag, the mate of the boot sat upright next to her. The padlock
was hanging on the lasp on the door.
“Feel better,” Maggie kept working the rag over the boot without
looking up from her labours.
“Yeah,” Jane pulled her coat off and was about to toss it
over the back of one of the chairs.
Maggie pointed quickly toward the door, “There’s a hook on
the door.”
Jane followed instructions.
The closet door was ajar and inside hanging on the single rail were
a short sleeved white blouse, a sleeveless dark sweatervest and a plaited
checkered skirt. On the back of the door was a black and white photograph
of a woman dressed in the clothes on the rail.
For a moment Jane looked at the photograph. The woman in the oversized
photograph was not pleasant to look at and did not appear to be enjoying
the fact of having been photographed. The woman, Jane noted, wasn’t
looking at the camera, she stood as if stopping to observe an incident
which clearly displeased her. Her left hand, almost formed into a clenched
fist. The expression she wore told of a woman who smiled rarely. Everything
about the photograph was belligerent, hateful.
“Irma Grese.” Maggie said, setting aside the first and picking
up the second boot. “Ever hear of her?”
Jane slid down next to Maggie, “God no.”
“You have heard of the Stanley Milgram?”
“That him in drag?” Jane giggled.
Maggie ignored her as she got to her feet and set the two boots down
inside the closet directly beneath the clothes on the rail.
“Come on, you know, Milgrim and his experiments in violence?”
Maggie stood before the photograph. “If you haven’t heard
of him, well, forget it.”
Maggie stood silent for a moment. Jane weaved without moving. Both women
were looking at Irma Grese not looking back.
“Irma, dear Irma.” Maggie seemed happier at that instant.
“Milgrim spent his career devising little experiments to prove
that if you had an authority figure taking responsibility you could
turn anyone into a killer. But Irma, she was ahead of Stan, way ahead
of Stan and she’d have scared the shit out of him.”
Maggie slipped her left hand under the skirt, her fingers skittering
over the fabric.
Jane finds a spot on the floor where Maggie had been working on the
boots and sits down, relieved and dizzy.
“They hanged Irma for what she did,” Maggie turned as she
pressed into the clothes on the rail, “and for getting off on it.
She was Auschwitz’s blond bitch. The quintessential angel of fucking
death.”
Maggie glances down at Jane against the wall as she nervously smoothes
the creases of her dress.
“Irma,” Maggie sighs the name, “healthy, Aryan Irma had
the license Milgrim only got paid to confirm in little boxed labs grinning
his way into journals of academia. Irma, sweat and muscle Irma, she
could live what most of us are too terrified to even entertain as nightmares.
She revelled in her sadism, her the perversions, they weren’t curbed,
they weren’t left unslaked, they were approved, fucking well licensed
by everything that was legitimate in her world.”
Maggie steps to one side of the closet, leaning against the wall, gazing
reverently into the woman on the door.
“She had free reign to inflict, she could be the extreme of herself,
she could live her own exaggeration as few people let alone women anywhere
at any time can.”
“What’d they do to the bitch again?” Jane sounded foggy
but had had enough of looking at this malignant woman.
“What’d the cowards do to Joan of Arc?” Maggie pushed
herself from the wall, proud before her Aryan love. “They hanged
the wench, with her grinnin’ back at them.”
“Fuck, Maggs!” Jane wanted to laugh, thought better of it,
“Joan and Irma, where the fuck is that lineage at? You…”
Maggie, turned toward from inside the closet. “Fear is what happened
to both women. The fucking bed wetters and pant pissers, that’s
what happened to both of them.
One talked to God, the other was Satan herself, walking among us, free
and powerful. Janey, you gotta kill ’em both, they knew that and
they still know that.”
At that moment Jane makes a mistake, she is afraid and its as palpable
as heavy traffic that for the first time she’s afraid of being
alone with this woman whose last name she has never heard. Maggie inhales
now refusing to take her eyes off Jane, refusing to release her.
“You can despise everything this fucking creature did,” Maggie
waits to see if this might placate Jane, but doesn’t really care
if it does. “But baby you have to envy her. I mean think of the
things, think of the weirdest, most bizarre things you ever wanted to
try, to inflict, to get off on and she could do them, any fucking time,
and she did. “
Maggie giggles, he hand under the skirt again. “There are some
who said she didn’t do anything, just watched. Just watched.”
Maggie is quiet for a moment.
“Betcha she creamed this skirt right down to her fucking boots.”
She pulls the fabric of the skirt to her face and sniffs. “Lucky
bitch.”
“They hanged her, fucking right they had to. She’d get off
on beating them, putting her fucking dogs on them, and all the time
jerking herself, right there, right in front of them as they got ripped
to shit.”
“Opportunity, that’s what this fucking beast had. Opportunity.
All any of us need, require, desire, you dig this shit!!? Oppor-fucking-tunity!”
Maggie is out of the closet, hand on the door knob.
“Opportunity gives you a face like hers, don’t you think?
Perpetural scowl, greased hair, heh what you say she used, sure as shit
weren’t any mousse we ever heard of, right. And those eyes, ain’t
nobody smiling back at those.”
Jane was on her feet and looking toward the door. Her lower lip trembled,
slightly, obviously, and Maggie was on her, grabbing her, pulling her
toward the closet door.
“Come on baby, tell me, would you make love to her, would you be
the girl to wait for Irma? Would you lie on her cot watching this beast
prepare herself to have you? Would you be hungry enough to press yourself
into her Swastica pussy? Would you have the courage?”
Maggie pushes Jane aside.
“I would.”
Maggie steps to the photograph, kisses the dead lips if Irma Grese,
Oberaufseherin of Auschwitz.
“I would.”
She kisses Irma’s breasts, both of them.
“I would.”
She kisses Irma’s plaited skirt beneath which Irma’s sex flushed
only for the cries of pain and terror.
“I would.”
She kisses the heavy dark boots.
It is only then that Jane notices Maggie having unfastened her jeans
had slipped her left hand inside as her right arm in rigid extension
rose above her.
“I want to.” Maggie is crying, barely audible.
“Tode durch den strang.” Maggie weeps the utterance, slowly
until her left hand triggers a vicious body wrenching shudder. “Tode
durch den strang.” The right arm drops, lifeless and Maggie is
quiet.
At that instant Jane knew Maggie for something she had never imagined.
Knew her to be both terror and passion and knew she could not pull herself
free of Maggie, who could not pull herself from making love to Irma.
In spite of a fear beyond any she’d felt before Jane could not
and would even if she could, break free from Maggie.
Even on this night when she returned to Maggie, in desperate trouble,
knowing how she feared facing the beast again, she knew in the end she
would do as Maggie ordered. She knew she would wait for Maggie, she
would polish Maggie’s boots as Maggie stood above her in white
blouse, sleeveless sweater and plaited skirt, her hands coiled in tight
fists. And Jane knew that even then, on her knees beneath the beast,
she would wait for Maggie.
With the key to Maggie’s apartment she stood in the aisle between
the booths, letting Maggie fasten her coat.
“Now go,” Maggie gave Jane, for the second time a gentle nudge
toward the exit.
As she watches Jane’s progress she feels nothing toward the defeated
woman, now hopelessly pregnant and terrified.
Maggie is at her best when she feels nothing, not fear, not anger, not
loss and not need. Just as she does at this moment, as she dials up
the last call of the night. The supervisor’s door closed and waiting.
The phone rings a couple of times, it rings past the usual point voicemail
kicks in and Maggie lets it ring.
A woman answers, breathless, abrupt. Maggie smiles to herself, a hard
ass case, on a night like this she looks forward to pissing somebody
off.
“Hello!?” The woman is genuinely angered.
In the background, another room it seems an argument between a man and
a woman can be heard building. The words they are saying have failed
to negotiate their way into the phone, but the tone is exciting.
Maggie says nothing, listening past the woman on the phone into the
room beyond.
“Hello!?” The woman demands an answer.
In the other room, the shouting has coalesced, both voices melding into
a singular malignant energy. Something crashes to the floor, a small
table Maggie imagines, pushed over, not thrown down, someone was pushed
into it.
“I’m looking for…” Maggie, eyes closed pushes the
script aside as a male voice, saying something about “that bitch…”
is heard rising from the room beyond the woman on the phone.
The woman on the phone has turned toward the voices behind her, Maggie
can feel her shift toward them.
“What?” The woman yells into the phone, above the rising violence.
The voices, the man and the woman, are moving closer to the woman and
phone, closer to Maggie, vicariously involved.
“How many times I gotta tell you,” His is a bully voice, the
voice of a man who dominates through bluster and bullshit. Maggie knows
him as a typology, the coward who creates an aura without substance.
But in that place with those women he is apparently terrible, “the
bitch,” he thunders, “your fucking worthless sister, the bitch
is outta here and right fucking now!”
The woman on the phone, stays on the phone, “Heh,” she yells
past the receiver and Maggie’s ear, “I’m on the phone!”
“I don’t give a shit,” he zeroes in on the phone woman
although still in the other room he has moved closer and is moving in,
“I don’t care what you are on and…”
“Come on man,” the other woman, phone woman’s sister
intervenes verbally and then, from the sounds of shuffling feet and
angry grunts, physically by putting herself between the man and his
target. “One more night ok.” She is pleading her sister’s
case. “Just let her stay until…”
Phone woman retaliates, “Fuck you Roger. You want me out, fine
you miserable little bastard!”
Maggie senses the woman’s anger has over come her fear.
“Your sister loves you.” Maggie carefully enunciates each
word, recognizing that the nuance of each word has incredible meaning.
A scuffling is heard across the room, the man grapples with the woman.
“What’s your sister’s name?” Maggie draws the woman
on the phone back.
The scuffling dies down, Maggie feels the woman’s attention is
on the phone again.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” The woman is after
Maggie.
“She loves you,” Maggie replies, pushing the script into the
garbage pail next to her cubicle, “your sister loves you. What’s
her name?”
“Come on, Roger!” Phone woman’s sister pleads.
“Denise,” the woman on the phone replies, “my sister’s
name is Denise.”
A lamp shatters, a picture frame is dislodged from the wall.
Phone woman wheels around facing the other room, phone in hand, “Asshole!
Leave my shit alone, I’m gone, satisfied, I’m leaving and…”
“Damn right,” Roger blusters, sensing victory, “and I’ll
help pack your worthless crap.” The remnants of the lamp are kicked
from the room, shattered porcelain skitters across the floor toward
the woman on the phone.
Maggie holds headset close to her mouth, “Denise is fighting for
you. Listen to her.”
Drawers are pulled free of the dresser in the other room and they fall
one after the other onto the floor, the contents scattering over the
floor. The voices of Denise and Roger are lost in incoherency again,
their voices rising and falling among the sounds of breaking furniture
and rifled clothes. Words are irrelevant to the tone of violence and
the physicality of their expression.
A window is pulled open and Roger is in front of it.
“Heh, bitch,” he is shouting past Denise to phone woman, “consider
yourself packed and gone, out your shit goes…”
Denise is grabbing at Roger, “Stop it! Stop it! What the fuck are
you…” The sound of tearing fabric overrides voices and violence.
“Denise loves you,” Maggie is holding the woman to the phone,
“you’re sister loves you and you aren’t going anywhere.”
The room goes silent for a split second as if Maggie’s voice had
carried beyond the woman holding the phone.
“What did you say?” the woman is surprised, “What the
fuck are you talking about…” the woman is annoyed, “who
are you and…”
Maggie leans into her cubicle, her every fibre focussed on the woman
on the other end of the phone.
“Listen to me,” Maggie’s voice, cold and fierce in its
certainty, “Denise is fighting for you. She is fighting to keep
you. Fight him. Don’t hang up, put the phone down and fight him.
She wants you to, your sister, she wants you to fight him. Listen to
her, she’s fighting him, she’s fighting him and she is doing
it for you.”
The supervisors door opens just a crack.
Maggie doesn’t pause, knowing the supervisor’s fear has caused
him to zip up.
From the room beyond the struggle continues. Denise says nothing as
Roger attempts to further destroy her sister’s life. Defeat is
the third presence in that room and is crippling Denise.
Maggie whispers into the phone in a tone barely audible, “Put the
phone down, don’t hang up and fight him.”
The receiver is gently placed on the table and the woman’s footsteps
can be heard receding into the room beyond. Maggie sits back in her
chair, pressing the headset closer. She closes her eyes.
Suddenly Roger’s voice rises above the fray, “Heh, you tore
my fucking shirt, you stupid…”
Denise cries out as Roger’s fist connects with her cheek.
At that instant Roger is heard to cry out as the phone woman flails
into him with fists and feet. In the fury of violence Roger topples
over a small table, breaking it as the woman follows him down.
Denise joins the attack on Roger who can be heard pleading, crying out
that he’s been cut, that he’s bleeding.
The supervisor is peering from the crack in the door, staring at Maggie.
From inside his office Roger’s defeat can be heard and Maggie watches
the supervisor watch.
Facing him in her chair as they listen together she leans back and slips
her left hand into her pants, between her legs, and closes her eyes
concentrating on the sound of Irma’s victory.
The room around her is filled with the sounds of two women kicking and
punching into soft tissue. Listen, listen she thinks as Roger makes
no sound and Irma smiles at the end of a rope.
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