Dorothy and the Duke

Duke, there’s one. A fat one, sleeping it off right there.

Judy motioned to the blind-drunk hobo with one hand, tilting a bottle of Seagram’s dry gin to her lips and then up with the other. Her companion was skeptical.

Where? Oh, him. Fat bastard. Maybe tonight isn’t…

Don’t be a fag you little faggot. You said we were going to be on a party Duke. Before I let you put it in my ass you’re going to have to earn it.

The way she growled the word “earn” made John Wayne nervous. He wasn’t used to a girl like Judy. Nobody was used to girls like Judy. As if to prove the point, she’d upended the gin one last time before long striding across the street toward the alley that the bum had chosen to bed down in. Wayne heard the muted smack of painted glass shattering on fresh cement, and saw Ms. Garland’s blacked-out form go from one side of the street towards the other. He was mesmerized. She was birthday-naked, he knew, under the fur coat she wore.

From out of the darkness, “C’mon Faggot!”

He said,

“Oh boy.”

And moved across the street behind her.

***

Judy Garland taken took a leap of faith in suggesting what she’d suggested, but The Duke wanted to fuck her very badly, and so he played along, made the right noises. He’d also come to a more secret covenant, this one with his own self.: If it did come down to a killing matter, he stood ready do away with a hobo or two, or a thousand if that’s what the situation required. It wouldn’t be the fist time. He was John Fuckin’ Wayne goddamn it!

They’d been on their way to a party. Garland had insisted on coming by with HER car and driver instead of the other way around. She sounded all freaked out on the phone. Rambling and changing subjects: in her infant’s whine.

I had mahogany airline trays installed my love, and I’m just dying to put them to use. Varnished hardwood from Guam, or some other place in Canada or something. I spent 10 weeks in Manitoba a few years ago for MGM. It was cold there, I brought every layer I had and still every night I’d freeze. Never mind all that though. Please Mr. John Wayne, please just this once! Can we? Can we? Can we?

She was like this. The Duke couldn’t tell if it was because of the booze or the pills or what. He’d known her for a minute now, and all he say for certain was that she was the most desirable woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Which was weird, because she - he knew from more than one demonstration - could drink him under the table and back up top again. It wasn’t the cocaine either, because he’d seen her stay up without sleep and without anything but scotch to drink, or eat, for three and four-day jags. Her appetites were other-worldly and without peer, male or female, in the area of recreational intoxicants. She spoke like an infant, and he loved it. He loved it when she called him “Mr. John Wayne” like that, so he said yes to everything. She’d been an hour and twenty-seven minutes late. He’d said nothing. She pulled up at his curb and shouted:

“Get in you fucker we’re gonna be late!”

She was sitting in the rear bench and the new air-line tray was pulled down in front of her. She handed him a four inch straw made of diamond-encrusted glass and started naming off illicit substances and motioned at the table.

This brown pile is uncut Persian heroin, and the white is pharmaceutical grade coke. This, she held up a glass pipe with a sweet smelling pack in the bowl, is opium and high grade hashish and this...

She put an enormous brown cigar into her mouth and began to light it, spinning, sucking, and talking as she did so.

...This is a very potent blend of native Jamaican marijuana. I soaked the leaves and buds in hash-oil for a week.

She exhaled an impossibly-large reefer-cloud and said, looking around the limo-cabin.

Did I skip any anything?

She mock-perused the still-life of drugs on the tray. ..

No?…Good. Help yourself Johnny. If you can show me a good time I might let you fuck my face for a few minutes later on.”

***

The occasion was a boring one, the hosts not rich or well known enough to mention. John and Judy were the most famous people there and this was always tricky for her. Made her feel “exposed.,” she liked to say. She kept going back and forth to the bathroom.

Wayne watched all the bathroom trips with hesitant relief. The grains would keep her awake until he got a chance to get her pants off. Gal drinks like that, he figures, white powder’s the only thing keeping her on two feet after midnight. He thought about just following her to the john and getting it done but the place was crawling with the ink. His ass on the cover of Top Secret Magazine he could do without, so he played it cool, burying three-finger scotch high-balls like they were glasses of water. By the time they’d spent two hours at the place the two of them were well-done, carrying on mumbled conversations with ghosts, patio-furniture, and whatever people they ran into. When it finally came time to leave for real, it was Ms. Garland that sounded the call.

The Duke didn’t see the whole thing but he saw the important part. The broad on the way back from a bathroom mission. Some joker thinks it’s his cue, one of the younger guys, Duke couldn’t place the face. He sees the guy grab for an arm, reeling Ms. Garland like a cod on a hook. Sees her flow with it, smiling as he pulls her in to whisper into a perfect, diamond-studded ear. She’s digging it, she’s giggling. Even the Duke missed the ketchup bottle. Even as she’s shining the loser up right back, whispering her own sweet nothings, she makes ready with the ketchup bottle, a half-full, heavy-duty double-thick Heinz “57” bottle at that. She raises it behind him and continues whispering, brings it down like a hammer on the top of the clod’s head. Then ketchup is everywhere mixing with blood. People start to crowd in. The Duke sees the guy’s eyes roll back to plain white under all that ketchup, and disappear under all those people.

The broad is next to him then. She’s whispering to him now and the Duke is checking her mitts for bottles.

“That’s our cue, Duke. Follow me.”

***

They rolled out through the kitchen. Wayne lit a mini-cigar on the way out and snatched a strip steak off a plate, poised to run before the violence. He’d finished it off by the time they got to Judy’s car. Wiped his hands on her mink stole. She said,

“I want your cock in my mouth, John Wayne.”

He looked about. The dirty snow and the rainy frozen mists had covered Manhattan like a frosting. The Duke, all class, grabbed Ms Garland, both hands on her head. He shoved downward. All the while intoning through steak-chunks and whiskey breath:

“Go ahead darlin’, just mind your teeth.”

She agreed. A steak-particle fell to her hair, got snared in there. Wayne went digging for it, greasing up her hair with steak-juice.

“uhmm hmm…”

Through a mouthful of his cock. The Duke had not yet finished when she spied the hobo.

***

“C’mon Duke, he’s gonna wake up. Help me tie his feet,” said Judy with a voice suddenly sober as a judge.

Weird, the Duke thought. Quite a change.

He found himself following very specific, and very loud, commands.

“Grab his feet. Both his feet idiot! Good, now swing…you’ve got to lift ‘ya girl. C’mon, I can’t do it all myself.”

They worked and worked to get the stinky old bum into a suitable position for carrying but en route he woke up. Launched right into a chorus of “I Gotta Be Me,” loud and, amazingly, on key.

“Actually he’s got some pretty good pipes,” said Judy. Then as they made the car she produced a eight inch leather sap and fetched the drunk a good one right on the forehead. The Duke saw it and winced. He’d caught a few like that himself. This fella was gonna wake up hurtin’.

“Damn little girl, you coulda maybe killed him there. That’s quite a thing.”

“Ha, even this mope wont cash out from that finger-bang. Let’s flip him into the trunk. I want you to fuck my ass inside the limo while I think of things to do to him.”

***

Five hours later, the hapless hobo woke up to sex noises and then loud farts. He woke, but found he could not move. Anything. He was lying down, he knew that because his head was on a bearskin rug. His and the bears head were actually right next to one another. He had been considering this when the sex-sounds came again. Closer this time. Behind an enormous Queen Anne with red velvet appointments. Then things got weird. The girl from the movies popped her head and two arms up over the back-side of the sofa. Her hair was quilted with sweat and she said:

“Before we go on I think I gotta take a shit.”

Then John Wayne ( he knew it was John Wayne because the Duke was wearing the same cowboy hat that he’d warn in Red River, his favorite movie ) Stood up from behind Dorothy’s head. Naked and puzzled, big as life. Looking down, he became perturbed. Said:

“It looks like y’ awready did girl.”

“Oh shut the fuck up before I make you eat it.”

“It’d be a damn improvement missy. Your mouth is like ashtrays I’ve licked.”

Judy, about to rejoin, suddenly eyeing something important and excited.

“Look Duke: The hobo is waking up…”

***

She crawled over the couch like a snake, and again the bum found his body an unwilling participant in his most important plans. She was in his face then, taking up all the light.

“Wow you stink! It’s you’re lucky day though, honey. You get to see famous people naked before anything permanent goes down…”

He inhaled to answer, and that’s how he found out his voice wasn’t working.

“Oh don’t try to answer buddy, I shot you full of clay.”

“You know what clay is? It’s zombie paste. A gift from my first husband who spent a great deal of time in Haiti. I paid ten thousand dollars for a mayonnaise jar FULL of the stuff. I’m sure by now you know pretty much everything to know about what it does. In case you were wondering, the effects last about 36 hours. I guarantee you will be done here before that. You should be entirely comfortable and pain free for the duration of our escapades here.”

The bum looked straight ahead and said nothing. “Escapades?”

“Hey Duke.”

Wayne didn’t answer.

“DUKE!”

“What is it Missy, I’m looking for food! Where’s there a hamburger in here?”

“Get up here one minute, Duke. I have an important question for you.”

She was staring at the paralyzed bum like an ancient artifact. Wayne barreled in, an undulating sweaty mess smoking a small cigar. Naked still, save now for a toothpick on the opposite side of his mouth from what looked like at least six beef jerky sticks. He was complaining:

“Damn it lady - all those stairs! What the fuck is it that couldn’t wait until I’m finished eatin’.”

His eyes, wild and sleepy at the same time, lit on the wet bar. He wandered over. Poured himself four fingers of the good stuff and turned back to Ms. Garland. She said nothing, but reached under the bed. The bum was staring straight into amazing, well trimmed, Judy Garland genitalia when she shot back out and pronounced:

“I found out this guys name.”

Wayne wasn’t having it.

“What the fuck? lady you…”

But before the Duke can finish, the hobo, whose name was David, watched the talented Garland rear up, clutching a very sharp looking scimitar in both hands. Watched her pause for a second, and then bring the thing down hard. The bum felt nothing. Judy said:

“His Name is LEFTY! Get it Duke!? LEFTY!”

And she laughed and hacked for ten minutes. Stopping only to shoot up the Bum with another full dose of the zombie paste.

The Duke let himself out.

***

David, whose real, given name was David Briar, lasted about another three weeks. For each day of that time period, two things happened: Firstly, Ms. Garland would shoot him up with a hefty dose of the paste. Secondly: She would then cut off a body part, and blow-torch the wound to staunch the blood.

She started with his left hand. Judy, coming home late from another Hollywood scene, was all business for that one. She didn’t seem intoxicated but he knew she was (mostly because, well, she always was). He watched impassively as her eyes darted around the room, finding his own eyes only every few minutes, and each time only for moments.

“You won’t feel a thing honey.”

She’d said, but that wasn’t entirely true. He felt pressure of sorts, wherever she cut, and always ached in the final hours before his next syringe-full of the paste. The blow-torch cauterizations were particularly uncomfortable. Sometimes he felt the true burn screaming from them, and could do nothing to slake the pain. Those hours would be eternal in his mind. Waiting in vain for a deliverance that seemed a long time coming.

After that, Tuesday and Wednesday, she took his arms. Then, two-at-a-time for the next week, his toes. Then both feet. Then she hacked his arms to the elbows and his legs to the knees using a shiny new hack saw…

It’s made of admantium! Isn’t that crazy? Admantium!

She’d exclaimed as she sweated and worked at slicing through his patella. He watched her, staring implacably at her terrible enthusiasm. Sometimes he wondered why.

Before long the man who had been David Briar had been reduced to just a torso and a head. The last thing Garland cut off of him was his penis and balls. She’d shot him extra full for this operation, and was obviously worried about excessive bleeding.

“I’ve been reading medical journals Mr. David, so I hope to contain the mess. Sorry if I can’t get all of it.”

Indeed she couldn’t. He watched as his life drained out from the hole in his crotch, wondering what came next. Ms. Garland left the next day for a three-week shoot in Chicago.

“You’ll probably not be here when I get back dear, but rest assured the pleasure was all mine.”

She kissed him the European way, one on both cheeks, and exited his life for good.

***

The Duke came by later that night, and David Briar was still hanging in. He saw the Duke enter the room and, for one split second, David allowed himself to feel some hope of rescue other than death. The Duke! Obviously, Briar mused, the great John Wayne couldn’t sit idle and let the insane woman slice him apart like a crown roast. He’d come to take him away, and Ms. Garland was probably already in police custody.

The reverie, however, was short lived. The Duke came over too him and began prodding and poking with his hands around his David’s wrists. He spoke out loud in the darkness:

“Excellent pilgrim. Dead and just so…”

David felt himself being flipped over onto his belly (Ms. Garland had been keeping him in the master bathroom) but he didn’t feel anything else.

“Thank you missy, wherever you are…”

Said the Duke, wiping himself off with a $80 Neiman’s towel. He stopped at the wet bar, helped himself to three fingers of the good stuff on the way out.