Free Technicolor Pulp by Arty Nelson

front of me. They turn the
     corner, I speed up, following their chatty heads as we cut through Leicester Square.
    “Robyn’s flat’s just on the other side of the square,” Donald says, with a long arm pointing at a small building. There’s
     a fortune-teller’s half-mooned shop on the ground level and a man holding a baby while talking on the phone in the window
     up above the flower boxes, in between white wooden shutters.
    “Christian… Oh Christian, my love…” Louis yells up at the window. “… He’s almost as cute as you, Jimi.”
    “He IS a real looker isn’t he,” I squirm, half sarcastically, half jealous. The door next to the shopbuzzes open. We wind up a tight staircase and into the flat.
    The flat’s painted gold with a dull black ceiling and there’s industrial music playing loud. Christian holds the baby in his
     arms while he argues on the phone and circles the entire flat. We sit down in the living room and Donald pulls out another
     spliff. The beat of the music cuts through the room—a mix of power tools, synthesizers and chemical anger. Mannequins, painted
     all different colors, hang from the ceiling—black ones, blue ones, ones with glitter. The walls are filled with paintings
     and sketches all of the same model.
    “Oh that’s Robyn… She’s a real Madonna fan, heeheehee!” Louis says, noticing that I’m drawn in by the similarity of all the
     pictures. Robyn has a sexuality about her. I don’t know if it’s the artwork or the premise but the point gets across. I sit
     back, take a hit of the passed spliff while she watches me from all over the room… Purring… Secrets from another lifetime.
     She’s OF some other century… I guess would be the best way to imprison her in the written word. More a damsel than a woman.
     It would be alright to tell her what I really thought and felt. She would know it anyways. The old man once told me that french
     women were as old as their country, not as their cunts, and I can see the story of England etched into Robyn’s oil-base eyes.
     Not brash and new, like American bitches, all attitude and no wisdom. But pools of sin, deep and warm, her eyes tell me. The
     kind ofsin that stands above judgment, quietly commanding respect.
    “This Robyn chick already HAS everything Madonna’s got.”
    “… And more, heeheehee!” Louis and Donald both sing.
    Christian and the baby now stand in front of us.
    “Robyn’s due back any minute.” He walks back out of the room into the hallway. The baby looks at us over Christian’s shoulder
     with silent eyes. Christian’s striking, with hard angles and olive skin like some Apache or something. One of those weird
     postmodern model types. The baby looks like it could be his. Donald gets up and walks into the kitchen, returning with 3 pints
     of ale. We all take swigs and sit drowning in the pulse and bang of the technogrunge muzak. The flat spooks me… Drug vibe…
     I can taste the bad energy in the beer. This place’s got a black soul. I’m uneasy and restless even though I’m drawn to all
     the Robyns.
    “Robyn broke that bed buggering Christian with a bloody strap-on,” Donald says, pointing to a broken-down bed in the corner
     of the room.
    “Didn’t you, Christian?” Louis chirps.
    “What?” He looks up from the phone, irritated, the child ducking behind his shoulder.
    “I said didn’t YOU and Robyn break THAT bed with nasty toys?” Louis repeats, pulling a huge black strap-on dildo out of a
     table drawer. “Have this tagged and marked as a divine weapon, heeheehee!” he titters.
    “Put that bloody thing away, would you, Louis! I got a sore backside just looking at it!” Donald says. Christian is out of
     sight by now, off in the kitchen. I sit with this twisted Laverne and Shirley and wait for the X-Damsel. The music marches
     on with the clang of hammers, the shrieks of tortured keyboard, and every once in awhile, a vocal comes on and says something
     like, “… You