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    Desire: A Novel
    Desire: A Novel
    Desire: A Novel
    Ebook62 pages58 minutes

    Desire: A Novel

    By Brian McGreevy

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    About this ebook

    Desire is the star attraction at a secluded Rust Belt gentlemen's club called Paradise, where it is rumored she possesses strange powers both on and off the stage. But the arrival of a mysterious stranger amid a series of gruesome livestock mutilations throws Desire’s life into a turmoil of secrets, dark passions, and the most dangerous magic of all: love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRare Bird Books, A Barnacle Book
    Release dateJul 14, 2015
    ISBN9781942600275
    Desire: A Novel
    Author

    Brian McGreevy

    Brian McGreevy grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. Now a screenwriter who has had two screenplays featured on the best of the year Black List, he is working on an adaptation of Dracula for Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company. He lives in Los Angeles.

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      Book preview

      Desire - Brian McGreevy

      This is a Genuine Barnacle Book

      A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books

      453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

      Los Angeles, CA 90013

      rarebirdbooks.com

      Copyright © 2015 by Brian McGreevy

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:

      A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

      453 South Spring Street, Suite 302, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

      Set in Dante

      Design by starling

      Cover art by Matt Buck

      ISBN: 978-1-942600-21-3

      ePub ISBN: 978-1-942600-27-5

      Cataloging-in-publication data is available upon request.

      To Chassidy Rana

      Nobody asked me if I was wild.

      —The Leopard

      Contents

      I

      II

      III

      IV

      V

      VI

      I

      Fade in: Just off the Penrose exit of I-70, past the wheeling eddies of night snow and the orange diffusion of road flares (semi truck, black ice) there is a remote gravel lot occupied by a squat, unassuming beige building, the color of synthetic flesh: Paradise. At the door a young, stoic, and very large black man named Payroll checks your ID. He knows you at this point, but in this economy they can’t afford a fine. Same old soup, just reheated, is how he is doing. He blows on his fingers, it is cold and the tips are cut off of the gloves, but he still knows he is lucky to have the work. Through the purple velvet curtain, across the dark, drab carpeting (its function is to be absorbent, not cosmetic), past the hollow-eyed men watching the Penguins game and nursing their beers (this economy is not for the thirsty), and skirting the over-cologned perimeter of the Colonel, proprietor of Paradise, who wears a silk black shirt under which his gut rests like a hibernating animal and holds court —You think you want my job, lemme tell you, one week a month all their periods sync up and you got forty basket cases on the floor, it’s nuttier than squirrel shit, lemme tell you— you find a table near the main stage and order the first of the mandatory two drinks you will make last (you have the money, but not the palate for what passes for alcohol around here), and you wait. The girl currently dancing is Japanese, skinny and with a long face, but her race is rare enough in this corner of the world to ensure a niche market; the girl following her is white with an upper body of normal proportions but a behind so wide and round it’s like a post with two tetherballs hanging from it; the girl after that has been doing this so long you can almost hear the creaking of her joints over the beat, rode hard and put away wet, as it is said in the local vernacular, she could easily have daughters working here. You give money to all (not enough to be conspicuous, you are the only man in here whose coat has buttons and not a zipper, and you don’t need more attention); you could try to count the number of naked female bodies you’ve seen in your time but you could also try to count the grains of sand in an hourglass as they fall; nevertheless you have found something beautiful in every single one of them, because there is always something beautiful about sadness. But you are not here for them, or any of the others running their fingers through your hair or along your pectorals with a sweet plaintiveness under the usual hustle; they each want you to pick them because you are tall, dark, and handsome, your coat has buttons on it and your hands are smooth, your presence here is a mystery unto itself and they are, as always, the terminally curious sex.

      They are wasting their time. You are here for her.

      Finally the DJ calls her name and your heart does a small leap, it is pleasant to be reminded that the old boy has some life left yet, and under the black lights, she shines: legs feminine but muscular, even with those sparkling monstrosities on her feet she could walk a tightrope without looking down, some gyroscopic connection between the spread of her hips and the rolling muscles of her belly and the earth’s core (or, in the local vernacular, built like a brick shithouse), hair shaved military style along the sides with a floppy Mohawk down the middle, and that smile, the pure and almost religious totality of her smile, as though that pole were her salvation and

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