Enter the Aardvark
Page 15
It’s Ronald Reagan. It just slipped out.
Pinkwater, knowing perfectly well who you are (or were), stops her spreading. She picks a congealed strawberry off her bagel, flicks it into the sink, and for some reason, you have no idea why, begins talking about her abortion in college. How she does not regret it. How it’s one of the easiest procedures in the world actually, and Pinkwater has had monthly periods that were harder than her abortion, she says, and if you want to talk big government, how much bigger, how much more invasive and controlling can government get when it’s allowed to patrol a freaking uterus? A safe abortion is a basic right, she says, required for the full emancipation of women, and guys like you, Alex Wilson, have ridden high on the backs of women’s rights for too long, too long, she says, prompting the other women to nod their heads deeply. They chime in like, Pinkwater, we’ve all had abortions, and they all start in about their abortions.
“I was out in three minutes,” one says, and as they get into it, the women are so matter-of-fact that they scare you.
You glance around the room in a slight panic. Like something is going on, something is happening that you do not understand, because despite all that has happened to you, you still have not evolved, perhaps will never evolve—
Yet there is hope for you.
Because certain late nights, you have noticed, your apartment in Silver Spring is accompanied by certain strange noises. It’s like someone outside is walking the grounds around your apartment building before pausing, for a moment, in front of your window, and despite the fact that you are on the ground floor and keep the blinds closed when you watch TV, you can, like, totally discern the snap-shuck of a Zippo.
You can, from within the confines of your living room, smell the burn of the cigarette, hear its little crisping fire followed by the deep, warm sigh of a man leaning his back against the Maryland brick, smoking, and Greg Tampico, he always used Zippos, he always sighed like that after the first drag, and while you understand intellectually that it cannot be Tampico, there’s just no way that it’s Tampico, the figure who has begun appearing outside your window late at night, smoking, strikes your imagination in such a way that it frightens you—your dreams, you’re unaccustomed to using them—and on those nights, it feels as though Tampico’s really there, with you even though he’s not with you, and so this ghost is, like, a starting point, now room has been made, there is now a place within you where your imagination can take root and maybe grip you, maybe grow—and the Herero, the Namibians sporting the skins of their oppressor, they too are on your mind as you sit here in the break room of the Jefferson Building listening to Pinkwater, staring helplessly at the colorful rack of lightweight ladies’ sweaters, the Costco mini fridge and microwave matching set, the coffee mugs that have been washed and carefully dried that say things like DANCE LIKE NOBODY’S WATCHING or EVERYTHING WHALE BE ALRIGHT (with a picture of a whale on it), or WOMEN’S PAIN IS NOT NECESSARY FOR MEN’S SELF-DISCOVERY, or the chintzy-ass poster of Thomas Jefferson on the wall above the sink and the quote beneath it—ACTION WILL DELINEATE AND DEFINE YOU—until you meet eyes with the only other man there on break.
He is sitting with you and the women at the table, but you didn’t even notice him until now. He could be anywhere from forty to sixty, you think, and is, like, completely at ease with the conversation. He is helping himself to a lemon poppy-seed muffin big as a small cake, the biggest one in Pinkwater’s bin. As his hand reaches for it, you can see a blue network of raised veins stretching toward his knuckles, it’s the slow blood chugging in and out of his heart, and watching him reach for the muffin ignites something within you: it’s like, you don’t even want the muffin.
But it suddenly matters to you that you get it.
You are fast, faster than he is by a long shot, and because you want the muffin and you are fast, you can easily get the muffin first in a quick grab (which, to the tremulous shock of the man, you do), and it’s even heavier than you expected, all almond oil, and you do not even bother to peel off the wrapper as you hold the muffin in front of your face and gaze at your new enemy. You do want this muffin, you are hungry, you think, and make a mental note to go on Amazon tonight to order your penny loafers. A week’s worth of Van Heusen. A cheap braided belt. Khakis.
It’s not the first time, you think, it won’t be the last, and delightedly watch his wrinkled face fall as you take a large bite, bearing yourself into the infinite boredom.
Acknowledgments
This novel would be invisible were it not for the honesty and talents of Jim Rutman. I am also deeply grateful for the overwhelming generosity and incisive queries of my brilliant editor, Jean Garnett, and for the extraordinary support of Reagan Arthur and everyone at Little, Brown, notably Betsy Uhrig and Dianna Stirpe. And my deepest gratitude to the artist Louis Jones for his illustration, and his vision. Across the pond, I thank Kirsty Dunseath, my editor at Penguin Random House UK, for her assistance with all things British. With further gratitude to Ethan Nosowsky, Deb Olin Unferth and the Creative Capital Foundation, the Maine Arts Commission, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Anderson Center for the Arts, Bates College, and the Visitor Information Centre in Royal Leamington Spa, England. I must also thank Karol Frühauf and György Himmler for hiring me during the summer of 2017 to escape U.S. politics and guard the Maria Valeria Bridge between Štúrovo, Slovakia, and Esztergom, Hungary, and finish this book. Next, I thank Brian Brodeur, Benjamin Chadwick, Tracy Zeman, Courtney Campbell, Zachary Tyler Vickers, Paul X. Rutz, Thomas Israel Hopkins. Acknowledgments are further due to Practical Taxidermy, by Montagu Browne (1878); “The Aard-Vark or Earth-Hog,” by Émile Oustalet (1879); “Biology of the Aardvark,” by Joachim Knöthig (2005); “Thoughts out of Season on the History of Animal Ethics,” by Dr. Rod Preece (2007); “Bayle’s ‘Rorarius,’ Liebniz and Animal Souls,” by Richard Fry (2015); “Anthropomorphic Taxidermy and the Death of Nature,” by Michelle Henning (2007); Reincarnation in World Thought, by Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston (1967); and Images of Greatness: An Intimate Look at the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, by Pete Souza (2004). As we hurtle to the end, I thank Julie, my laugh machine and “Insider,” and, of course, my greatest thanks go to the love of my life (and the next), JW.
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About the Author
Jessica Anthony is the author of The Convalescent. She has been a butcher in Alaska, an unlicensed masseuse in Poland, a secretary in San Francisco. In 2017, while writing Enter the Aardvark, Anthony was working as “Bridge Guard,” guarding the Maria Valeria Bridge between Štúrovo, Slovakia, and Esztergom, Hungary. Normally, she lives in Maine.