Mystery Girl: A Novel by David Gordon Page A

one to watch, while he deigned to accept money from the occasional customer. I chose Project A 2, actually superior to the first. Its costumey nineteenth century setting is cheering, and Jackie’s sweetheart is, as usual, played by the incomparable Maggie Cheung, and among its many miraculous feats is that part when, in an homage to Buster Keaton, Jackie walks calmly down the side of a collapsing wall, several stories high, and steps off just as it crashes. A world where this can happen can’t be all bad. Vintage Jackie Chan movies are one more small reason to suspect that life might be worth living. After all, a man can do this with his body. Not me, of course. But someone, anyone. Flight and grace and joy and wonder such as this were right there all along, trapped inside mere matter.
    We were about to put the movie on when MJ arrived bearing Vietnamese food. As soon as she spotted me she plopped the bag on the counter and came rushing over, arms out, making that sound that girls (even tough brainy tattooed dykes in cut-offs, a wifebeater, and boots) make when they see a bird fallen from a nest. She hugged me tight. “I heard about Lala. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
    “Rubbing your boobs in his face like that is pretty good for starters,” Milo said, wrapping a spring roll in lettuce and dipping it in sauce before stuffing it in his maw. “Now how about a mercy fuck to take his mind off things?”
    “He’s not like you,” she said, patting my head like a puppy. “You’d fuck that spring roll if it had a hole. Or better yet, stick it up yours.” She grabbed one and took a savage bite.
    “Look who’s talking. You got a spring roll down your jeans right now. I see the bulge. You could deep throat that thing easy.”
    Laughing, she pushed the roll in and out of her mouth.
    “Actually, I think those spring rolls are mine,” I said. “You guys ordered the summer rolls.”
    “Sorry.” MJ offered me the drool-covered one.
    “Keep it,” I said.
    “See,” Milo said, opening the summer rolls. He took one andpassed them to me. “That’s part of why Lala dumped you. Right, MJ? He’s a sourpuss.”
    “Wrong.” She chewed the tip. “I think your wife’s crazy. After a few random fucks to get her pent-up sexual energy out of her system, she’ll realize she’s made a huge mistake.”
    “And it’s not all bad news,” Milo put in, his mouth now full of summer roll. “You’ve got a cush job there, assistant panty-sniffing for Inspector Fatso. Yes?” He turned to a customer who’d shyly approached, box in hand. Milo looked at it, vaguely affronted. “ Fritz again,” he said, sighing, and went in back.
    “Don’t listen to that fag,” MJ said, while the customer, a wee hipster in a porkpie hat and goatee, listened politely. “They have no idea how we feel at a time like this. Totally insensitive.”
    We? I wanted to ask. Instead I said, “I thought gay men were hypersensitive.”
    “That’s drag queens, and superfemme types. They’re technically women. But men on their own, totally unregulated testosterone? They’re just like mobile hard-ons looking to insert. I mean, two guys meeting on a bus could just be like, Hey you, want to fuck? Sure why not? Grunt, grunt. Splat. See you later. But two women, well, you can’t really imagine. Love, hate, tears, blood. That’s the first week. Or month. It’s menstrual theater. All human relationships are more or less impossible, but when you think about it, it’s heterosexuality that seems most unnatural, like trying to mate cats and dogs. Even for a very sensitive feminine man like you.” She patted my knee. “So don’t feel too bad.”

23
    MJ LEFT WHEN THE MOVIE started. She had no patience for kung fu, another pornographic form of male-on-male action, I suppose. We locked up and turned off the neon. Later, as Drunken Master II (not,of course, The Legend of Drunken Master, the butchered version released here) our second feature, headed