Cartilage and Skin

by Michael James Rizza

  “Are you going to be sick?” he asked, but she didn’t answer.

  The inside of the house was warm, and a faint sour odor permeated the rooms. He was already undressing her as she pressed into him more fully, leaning now with no more effort to stand on her own. He let her coat fall to the floor, and brushed it to the baseboard with an awkward swipe of his foot. They lumbered as a single body down the hallway, her hands dangling limply as his hands tugged at her zipper, exposing her broad, white back. He had to lean away from her to allow her black gown to slip down to her feet, and the gown, now gathered about her ankles, was shuffled and dragged along the hardwood floor; she made no attempt to lift her feet free until she came to the edge of the bed. There, with a little push, he deposited her. He squatted beside the edge of the bed, balled up her dress, and tossed it beneath an ironing board standing in the corner. He took off her shoes and, by some apparent whim, threw one into the bathroom and the other out into the hall. Then, with a soft moan, he slid up her body, tracing his chin along her thigh and resting it just beneath her breasts. He watched her lips move with her heavy breathing. Shutting his eyes and turning his head, he kissed her pale skin, his hands now gliding up her arms, his fingers slipping under her bra straps and easing them off her shoulders, all the while his body moving further up, until his temple rested upon the V of her collarbone and the whole weight of his body was atop her. He nestled and stirred, as if settling into plush couch cushions, burrowing into her flesh. The light was on, but he didn’t bother to get up and shut it. They remained motionless for a long time. He would have appeared to be sleeping if not for the occasional moment when he pressed his lips to her shoulder, not so much to kiss her skin as to taste it. The first sign of dawn revealed itself through the window as the daylight spread deeper into the room, vanquishing the odd shadows cast by the dim electric light. When he finally rolled off of her and lay on his back, she also moved. She mumbled. Her arm rose of its own accord, her big hand groping for him; she was uneasy and restless, until she found his belt and held onto it. He slipped his hand over hers, and again they slept. She breathed audibly, her mouth partly agape. Suddenly but slowly, he sat up, peeled her fingers from his belt, and eased himself off the bed. He went into the bathroom, came out again, and saw that she was still asleep, though now clutching the bed cover. At the door, he clicked off the light. He stood for a while, looking at her as if he longed to climb back in bed but was restraining the urge. At last, he walked over to the dresser, which was cluttered with tiny bottles and cosmetics. He wrote on a yellow notepad beside the phone that he’d be back by one o’clock, and then propped the notepad up against the phone. Her voice sounded, deliberate and clear.

  “Is it that woman from the party?” she asked.

  “What?” He turned around.

  “Is that where you always go? That woman you were talking to at the party. Is she the one?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not like that. I could never—”

  “Okay.” She rolled over, so her back faced him. A slight sound escaped her throat; she might have been crying.

  “I have to pick up order forms. The book route is demanding more time than—”

  “Okay,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Okay. Just wash up before you get back into my bed.”

  He stared at her, his whole body tense, unmoving. When he spoke, his voice seemed so full of anguish that it might crack. “Don’t break my heart,” he said. “Not you. Please.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Please,” he said, still staring and motionless. “I’ll be back right away. I’ll rush like mad. I have to—” he began, but then quickly left the room. Walking down the hall, he softly said, “I’ll be right back.”

  In the kitchen, he walked directly to a cabinet and took out two cans of tuna fish. He got a can opener from a drawer and left the kitchen. His pea coat hung from a hook in the hallway. Outside in the cold, he put on the coat and, in the same motion, slipped the cans of tuna and the opener into one of the deep pockets. Simultaneously, he buttoned up the coat, drove the station-wagon out into the road, and clicked off the radio. Then his expression went as blank as death, and he was only driving. He held the wheel with both hands. After a while, he passed into an underwater tunnel that moaned with the sound of car tires. He emerged from the tunnel and was greeted by orange cones and heavy machinery, abandoned road construction. The city was relatively quiet on this Sunday morning, moving in slow motion, groggy and just waking up. At last, when Ralph pulled up to a stoplight, his expression changed, not to take on life once again, but to set itself in a hard, brutal grimace, a block of bone, muscle, and cartilage thinly veiled beneath his skin. Suddenly, he drove through the red light and kept on driving with little regard for the laws of traffic, speeding through one intersection after another, turning without a signal. He came to a tight, cramped street, where the huddled buildings seemed to lean forward over the road, and the parked cars choked the passageway. He slowed down, but continued forward, until he found a spot where a large pile of heaped garbage bags had tumbled into the road; he gently plowed the station-wagon into the pile, and leaving the tail of his car protruding into the road, he shut the engine and got out. Although he walked briskly, and the air was fiercely cold, his face remained locked, but not exactly in irritation; rather, he seemed to be silently enduring a nasty pain. He walked several blocks and then turned down a side street. On the left was a long, windowless brick wall, the side or back of a building, along which a row of cars parked. On the other side was neither a curb nor sidewalk, so the doors simply opened up onto the street. The metal cellar doors and casement windows peeping over the edge of the road seemed to suggest that much of the life here was subterranean. Above him, several windows were sealed up with plywood, as if the residents inside—undoubtedly poor and very likely caught somewhere between struggle and defeat—were gradually working their way down to the cellar, where lost and neglected people came to accept their own surrender. The building appeared to be a monument to living suicide, to those interred in life; and the cellar, most of all, seemed like a good place to end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh was heir to. Perhaps it was disillusionment with mankind, the crushing weight of discontent or of failure, or simply, in some cases, a tortured mind, that woke up a person’s dormant capacity to succumb, as if anguish could fracture into pieces as numerous and light as snowflakes, float away, and dissolve, at the very moment a person laid down his head and yielded to sleep. Ralph entered the building through one of the doors and ascended a narrow staircase up to the second and then to the third floor. The hall was dimly lit, and little stubs of copper pipe stuck up from the floor where someone had apparently ripped out the baseboard heating. A person was walking down the hall. Ralph kept his gaze focused on the copper stubs, his face averted. The person, also with his head down, passed Ralph without acknowledgement and then bounded quickly and loudly down the steps. A radio was playing in one of the rooms. Ralph paused before one of the doors and glanced both ways down the empty corridor. He took out his keys and gently opened the door, letting the pale light from the hallway vaguely spread itself throughout the room, which was musty and poignant with the odor of disuse and trapped air. Ralph walked to the freestanding light. A figure stirred on top of the bed, but before Ralph could expose it to the light, it slipped to the floor and scurried under the bed. Ralph turned on the light. He then went back to the door, glanced up and down the hallway again, and locked the door. Moving quickly, without looking around to assess—or reassess—the setting, he put the two cans of tuna on the counter and opened them. He walked over to the bed that was pushed up against the cast iron radiator, and began to search the floor with his eyes. Still methodic, still with his face compacted into a hard knot, he dropped to his knees and briefly reached under the bed. Now with a green, plastic salad bowl in his hand, he rose to his feet again and walked back to the counter. He emptied the tuna into the bowl and set it on the floor beside the
bed. He stepped back and crossed his arms at his chest. Motionlessly, he stared at the bottom of the bed. A dog leash, fastened to the radiator, trailed over the mattress and disappeared beneath the bed.

  “Come on,” Ralph muttered. “Come on.”

  Nothing moved.

  “Come eat,” he said, in a warmer tone. “Let me take the gag off. I know you don’t like it. Come on, you bastard.”

  He continued to gaze. As rigid as wood or stone, he didn’t say anything. Nothing happened. The muffled sound of the radio filtered in from another room; footfalls sounded in the hallway. Ralph unfolded his arms and let them hang at his sides. Then, all at once, he flung himself at the bed and pulled at the leash. The bed began to slide across the floor, as if the leash were also fastened underneath to the frame. Besides the sound of Ralph grunting and cursing, as well as the legs of the bed dragging across the floor, there was a faint but shrill voice—similar to the screechy cries of a scared rodent.

  VIII

  Kyle stood looking out the window in his living room, with his back toward a man who was sitting on the couch. The man was dressed in the dungarees and jacket of the refrigeration company. He held the cap in his lap. His gaze, which was soft and slow, continually drifted from the carpet before his feet, up to Kyle, then back to the floor again.

  “I don’t understand what’s this all about,” Kyle said, still looking out the window. “He knew I had my doctor’s appointment this morning.”

  “I don’t think that’s the point. It wouldn’t matter so much if you hadn’t missed so many days lately,” the man said. “You should’ve come in afterwards.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “He didn’t send me, if that’s what you mean.” The man was now fingering his cap. “I was worried that you might’ve gotten bad news today. That’s all.”

  “No, my PSA is fine. The doctor says I’m in good shape.”

  “You’ve got it beat then. That’s good.” The man stood up and put his cap on, but he didn’t advance.

  “You’ve never got it beat. It could come back tomorrow. And then they’ll want to take off some more of my cock.”

  The man grew still, uneasy, as if he didn’t know if he should move or even look at anything.

  Kyle was holding the curtain to the side. He didn’t turn to face the man.

  “About the other thing,” the man began to say.

  “What other thing?”

  “Missing days at work.”

  “Ah hah,” Kyle said, almost happily. “You are his messenger.”

  “I’m your friend. That’s all.”

  “Tell him—”

  “I’m not going to tell him anything,” the man said. “I’m telling you.”

  Kyle suddenly let go of the curtain and turned around. He seemed half-startled, half-amused.

  “The little bastard is passing by again. See,” Kyle said, pulling the curtain aside. “There he goes.”

  The man stepped forward, but he didn’t seem concerned with looking outside.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” the man said.

  “These kids keep riding their bikes past my house. Like I’m a freak show. They think I’m crazy.”

  “Nobody thinks anything.”

  “You weren’t here when the police were poking around in my house and digging through my garbage. Half a dozen boys sat across the street watching, waiting for the men to carry out bodies or something. One of them, this little prick, told the police that I was all crazy and distraught when he shoveled my driveway that night.” Kyle smiled, lowering the curtain again. “That was his word: ‘distraught.’ When do kids use a word like that? This little prick goes by my house all day long, like he’s a detective or something, because he got to say that I was ‘distraught’ in front of the police.”

  “Anyone would’ve been distraught,” the man said as he moved toward the front door.

  Kyle nodded slowly, staring vaguely at the man’s chest. He appeared to be contemplating the word anew.

  “Maybe working again would be good for you,” the man said. “It’s better than staring out the window all day.”

  Still nodding, Kyle steadied his gaze upon the man’s eyes.

  “Okay,” the man said. He opened the door and let in the cold air. “I’ll see you Monday.”

  When the man departed, Kyle went to the window and watched him climb into his van and drive away. Long after the man had left, Kyle continued to stand at the window, with his palm resting flat upon the pane and his forearm holding the curtain aside. He stared blankly. He was dressed in a white tee-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants. His hair was a bit disheveled. Eventually, he lifted his hand from the glass, and as the curtain fell, he receded back into the house, taking slow steps. He seemed to be moving aimlessly, even as he entered the kitchen and began to fix himself a tall glass of cranberry juice and vodka. He didn’t bother to stir it. He wandered from room to room, occasionally stopping at one object or another, such as a soup can filled with pens or a mess of sneakers in the hall closet. He would remain fixated for a while and then move on. He carried his drink with him, and at the instant he finished it, he happened to be back in the kitchen, as if the end of his listless tour of the house coincided exactly with the moment he needed to refill his glass. He lingered in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, until the dusk began to creep through the bay window. He moved again, and this time his wandering brought him to the upstairs bathroom. He set the glass on the back lid of the toilet and started to undress. Only when he was completely naked did his expression change; his eyes, which had been fixed in a bland, drowsy gaze, now became glazed. He seemed to be on the brink of crying, but once he stepped into the shower, if any tears were shed, they were lost in the water.

  The shower appeared to revive him a little. He dressed himself in a pair of brown slacks and a button-down shirt, and after combing his hair, he even put a dab of cologne at the hollow of his throat and on the front of each wrist. He only had two sports coats in the bedroom closet, one black and the other a dark, murky brown, which he selected and hung over the edge of the crib. He checked his appearance in the full-length mirror on the closet door. Then he put on the sports coat and looked at himself again. He started toward the hallway, yet suddenly stopped and went back to the bathroom. He found his drink on the toilet. He stood in one spot in the bathroom until he finished the drink; lastly, he brushed his teeth.

  Despite the cold, he left the house without an overcoat and walked toward a small detached garage at the end of the driveway. Firewood, covered with ice and snow, was stacked against the outside wall. A path worn by footsteps through the snow led to a side door. Kyle entered the garage and locked the door behind him. In the dark, he walked across an empty parking space, got into an old Honda Civic, started the car, and got out again. He placed a milkcrate in the empty parking spot, as if he intended to sit down, but he then just stood there. The dome light from the idling car cast low, broken shadows across the concrete floor and sent vague, diffuse light up into the ceiling. Kyle seemed frozen, confused, on the brink of tears again, as if by stepping upon the empty parking space he’d awoken something inside of himself that unnerved him. But whatever spell held him, he cast it off with a sudden lifting of his gaze and a tiny sniffle. Inside the car again, he pressed the garage door opener attached to the visor. As the door creaked and chugged its way up the tracks, the exhaust fumes dissipated into the crisp night air.

  He drove along quiet suburban streets but soon entered the business section of a small town. Above the streetlights and buildings, the dark sky was full and depthless and blank. He parked beside the curb and then walked along the sidewalk. Most of the storefronts were shut down, but several people lingered under an awning up ahead. In the glow of greenish light, a thin girl was leaning against a man. She kept reaching for his cigarette, and he kept holding it out of her reach. Finally, she placed both of her palms on his chest, as if she’d been defeated and now surrendered herself
to him. As Kyle approached them, he watched the couple with a subtle, averted gaze. He opened the door and slipped into the building as though he feared they might attack him. The people on the sidewalk, however, paid no attention to him.

  Inside, the bar was shaped like a horseshoe, and tall, round tables lined the walls. People—a mostly younger crowd—cluttered together. Gray, hazy smoke floated above their heads. Although everyone appeared engaged with one another, the scene was like an elaborate pantomime as the loud music seemed to render them all mute and silly. Kyle looked for a stool at the bar, but quickly gave up and began to press his way across the room. He descended three steps into another room, which was quieter. People sat at tables littered with empty bottles and glasses. No sooner than Kyle found a seat at a corner table, a slight waitress, with her midriff exposed, came up and asked him what he would like to drink. He froze for a second, as if surprised that someone had spoken to him.

  “Vodka and tonic,” he said.

  “House okay?”

  “Sure.” He smiled at her, but she left without looking at him.

  A young man carrying a black bus box began to clear off Kyle’s table.

  “This yours?” he asked several times.

  Still smiling, Kyle responded “No” each time and watched the young man as if he were the entertainment.

  Shortly, the waitress brought him his drink and offered to start him a tab.

  “Sure,” he said.

  He sat back, resting one arm on the table and the other on the wide chair rail. Although the room was open and square—completely exposed in a glance—oval security mirrors were perched in each corner of the ceiling. The floor was made of hardwood. On some evenings, the tables and chairs might have been carted away and the room used for dancing; or more likely, it had been used for dancing in the past, before the bar area had expanded and took over the space.