The Unbinding

by Walter Kirn

  And the source of their gloom? Sterility. They longed for little ones but lacked the glands. I ordered my mind to furnish them with genitals, but when they unzipped their ugly jumpsuits there were small oval mirrors in their groins. When they thrust them together the mirrors cracked and bled. The blood was silvery, like mercury, and when it dripped it burned my children’s legs.

  Struggling to wake myself from this slick nightmare, which had started as a dream of resurrection, I fell out of bed for the first time since fourth grade and horribly torqued my three smallest right toes, which swelled into one indivisible bruised clump. I spiked a pint of bourbon with crushed Excedrin, hoping to endure until the morning, when I could visit a well-slept specialist, but just before dawn I opted for the ER and a groggy intern. I hopped across the courtyard toward my car, was soaked by the surge from a broken sprinkler head, and ended up resting on a bench trying to light a soggy Salem with paper matches that sizzled but wouldn’t flame.

  And then there they were, not thirty yards away, exiting Selkirk’s second-floor apartment and heading for a staircase whose bottom step I could reach and touch with my good foot. Grant looked tumbled and pulverized by sex, her hair a static-charged loose thatch, but Selkirk’s hair was wet and combed. Just hours ago he’d played the urban guerrilla, costumed in camo and war paint, probably, but now he was dressed Caucasian-casual, like a Today’s Man sales rack come to life. His banality did have a certain dazzle, though, and as he descended the stairs, I had a thought: He’s the prince of the kingdom we wish we didn’t live in.

  I nodded first. Proactive. Very frontal. I would have stood but my knot of fractured toes might have made it a wobbly performance. And I looked scary enough seated: a grimacing, wet, Excedrin-addled smoker sporting one polished dress shoe and one soiled tube sock. Miss Grant, who sometimes passed me on the walkways and had smiled at me once or twice, faded back and let Selkirk bear the brunt of me.

  “It’s Rob. Hi, Rob. You’re back from somewhere sunny. Incredibly reckless tan there,” Selkirk said.

  “My family all gets cancer anyway.”

  “Forewarned is forearmed. So how was Jesse? Fun?”

  “Deeply. From every angle. Fore and aft.”

  “And Rob’s an aft man. Thought so.”

  Quick. But meaningless. Wit can be adrenal. All animals are speedy when they’re threatened. When Selkirk felt safe again, he’d slump and slow, though.

  “Why such an early start today?” I asked him, though most of my attention had moved to Grant, whose meekness, wariness, or muddledness had caused her to almost dematerialize. Now there was a talent: auto-self-erasure.

  Selkirk ignored my question. “Wounded, Rob?” He pointed at my sock.

  “It’s self-inflicted. Any excuse for a pop of liquid morphine. I’m only half-homo, Kent, but I’m all junkie.” I chuckled to keep things light and sinister, then haltingly drew myself up on tender toes and extended a hand to Miss Invisible. “Robert Robinson,” I said, because obvious fraudulence is the most ominous. “Noticed you here and there but never met you.”

  She replied with her name, including her dressy middle name (always the mark of a born dullard), but if she shook my hand I didn’t feel it. What a magical nullity she was, odorless as aluminum even after her wee-hours screwing.

  “Some jackasses fucked my apartment up last night.” My diction was brutal but my tone was neutral. Nothing but the morning news.

  “How?” Grant said. This meant she knew. Because, in this case, the “how” was everything.

  “The usual bullshit. Stink bombs. Silly String. Burning bags of dog crap. Jars of piss.”

  “Ish,” said Grant. Then, “Ish,” again, to Selkirk. If she’d been briefed about the plan, she was feeling misled about the methods. He said paint but I said flaming excrement. It might be a day of lively phone calls.

  “It’s nothing worth calling the cops about,” I said, “but it’s certainly worth some vigilante payback. I won’t hit their houses, though; I’ll hit their vehicles. More personal. More perturbing. More like rape.”

  I hadn’t met Selkirk’s eyes yet, but I did now. They appeared untroubled but oddly filmy, as though he possessed those translucent inner lids that God gives to animals that swim and dive. And that’s what he seemed to have done: He’d submarined.

  “I need my narcotics,” I said. And it was true. There’s no pain worse than foot pain. Nor is there any diversion that can numb it. When the hurt comes from the bottom up, when it’s agony at the root, the self-important top two-thirds of us becomes an irrelevant dead trunk.

  “Too bad about your mess. That’s sick,” said Grant, still needling her beau, I sensed. “Hope it wasn’t superhard to clean. And hope you get the shot you need. Nice meeting you. There’s someone I need to cook a healthy breakfast for.”

  And then, with no farewell to Selkirk, no pat on the arm, no smile, no blown kiss, she set out across the courtyard for the parking lot, abandoning the winding sidewalk for a straighter route through the wet grass. She thought she was being cold and cutting, obviously, but Selkirk seemed fine with it, even a bit amused. He’d already forgotten her, but her attempted snubbing meant she’d missed it—and that she’d always miss it. Which is right where you want a woman you don’t care for but periodically have use for. Until you’re truly done with her, that is, and need the poor fool to believe it.

  This gave me an idea. An idea that, if it worked, I might regard someday as the idea. To clear the way for it, however, I’d have to come clean about my last idea.

  “I shouldn’t have joked like that. You had every right. I fucked you. I fucked your dog. You should have used pipe bombs. Hollow points. I’m sorry. My broken toes here? Karma. Kent, forgive me.”

  Selkirk rigid. Selkirk seizing up. Hands in pockets, elbows straight, knees locked. Selkirk convinced that if he warms to me, if he relaxes, I’ll get him with a shiv. Never trust a Robert Robinson. And I might just do it. Better safe than sorry. Selkirk adds nothing to society’s plus side. Anyone with lips can man a phone bank and read out canned advice on using jumper cables and treating spider bites. In the negative column, the traumas he might cause, if he’s allowed to continue, are sure to be unique.

  Still, he’s valuable to us. If we lose Selkirk, we lose Grant, and then the old colonel, who may be our true target, and the whole toothpick castle will fall before it’s built. And just when I’m laying in the central crosspiece.

  “You want the rotten truth? I took your new pet because I’m jealous, Kent. I’m not a drooling aft man, no, but I am most definitely jealous. Meeting you, reading you, dating your old girlfriend (who I’m shit-scared still loves you), I’ve started to wish I could be you. But I can’t. I can’t even get your attention on the street. I don’t have a lot of friends here.”

  Tentatively, in a whisper, calmer now: “I ignored you or something? When? I don’t remember that.”

  “I know you saw me waving. I whistled, too.”

  “Sometimes I get caught up in my thoughts. Was I in the plaza on my lunch break? I’m a basket case on my lunch breaks. I’m still buzzing from the AidSat chatter. It’s like the calls just keep on coming in.”

  “You want the dog back? I can do that. I’m ex-ATF. I can fix things. And I’m sorry.”

  “You were federal once? Really?”

  “Low-middle federal. That’s where everyone gets stuck, though.”

  “I hear it’s not great pay.”

  “It buys the beer. And believe me, you start to need the beer.”

  He nodded. “Burnout. That’s what a lot of our calls come down to. Burnout.”

  “In my case, flameout.”

  “Huh.”

  “Complicated episode.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Frankly, I’m in no mood right now. My toes. I might need a shoulder there, Kent. I hate to whine….”

  He gave his full support. He offered to drive me. I thanked him. We reached his truck. He apologized for my windowpan
es. I thanked him. We shared squares of gum from a packet in his ashtray and turned on the radio and watched the sun rise. And then I made my great request.

  “Would you and your girl want to go for steaks sometime with me and Jesse at the W? Next weekend, say? My treat? As one big gang? Sometimes it’s isolating to be a couple. For me, I mean. It’s too head-on.”

  He nodded, but not enthusiastically. He said the idea sounded “nice,” but it depended. I said that of course it depended. It all depends. But it’s best to ignore this, if possible, and try things.

  “I do try things,” Kent said.

  “So let’s get steaks.”

  I’d lost him, though. He’d submarined again. I sensed that he was practicing staying under and that he planned to live down there someday, with Jillian, the twins, and, eventually, me.

  Men can’t rage forever.

  19.

  [Via satellite]

  “AidSat? It’s Sabrina Grant. I’m calling for my Active Angel. My PIN is—”

  “Executive Autoforward.”

  “—is 765432.”

  “Sabrina?”

  “This is Sabrina. Is this North Platte?”

  “It’s Kent, Sabrina.”

  “Malpractice. Wrong. Unfair.”

  “I EAF’ed you. We need to talk. It’s serious.”

  “This is invasion of privacy. Use a phone! And no, I will not eat ribeyes with your ex-girlfriend and Mr. Fake Name who took your runty dog. Whom you’re suddenly buddies with again even though you paintballed his apartment. Or stink bombed or peed on it. What-fucking-ever.”

  “That’s not why I EAF’ed you.”

  “Get off my satellite!”

  “Do you understand what ‘passive coverage’ is? When we open the line and listen in on people in case they’re in danger or unconscious? Did anyone ever go over that with you?”

  “AidSat can listen to me without permission?”

  “For up to an hour, and then we have to signal you. Unless there’s a warrant or something. A subpoena. Let me ask you this: At any time in the last three weeks or so have you gotten the cicada tone?”

  “The one that reminds you to pay your bill?”

  “That one pulses. This one’s very different. It starts as a mild buzzing sound, but after ten minutes, if there’s no response, the pitch and the volume rise at intervals until it’s impossible to wear the ear jack, and anyone in a range of fifty feet will hear it and render assistance, hopefully. Even if your vital signs look good, we assume that you’re incapacitated by then. If your GPS signal is working, we also send in an emergency responder.”

  “I’m starting not to feel so good.”

  “No incredibly shrill and distracting cicada tone?”

  “I think my lunch is coming up.”

  “When I told you about my dreams of raping Rob, were you wearing your ear jack? Think. I hope you weren’t.”

  “It might have been on a shelf at Colonel Geoff’s. I’ve been taking it out. It bothers me. My stomach…”

  “Are you indoors or outdoors?”

  “At the day spa. Shit…”

  “Move to a toilet or a sink. If unable to reach a toilet or a sink, locate a suitable widemouthed receptacle. If you feel dizzy or light-headed, remain in place and kneel with head tipped forward—”

  “Don’t tell me how to puke! Oh, God. Oh, shit…”

  “Relax, Sabrina. Let it come. That’s good. If it feels like it wants to come again—”

  “Oh, hell…”

  “It’s scary, I know. Just let it have its way. Good one. Be sure not to aspirate the vomitus. If vomitus should lodge inside the airway, clear it with a finger. Another good one. Breathing looks normal, pulse is…Sabrina?”

  “Guggh…”

  “Entirely natural muscular contractions.”

  “It’s over now. I’m emptied out, I think.”

  “It’s best not to stand yet. Stay kneeling. Proud of you.”

  “Will you please, just please, please stop it, Kent? I soaked my whole station. I soaked my towels, my tweezers. What are those things? They’re rice. They must swell up. I’m definitely feeling better, though.”

  “I’m glad. So what you’re saying to me is you don’t think you had your ear jack in at my place?”

  “I hate you now. In whole new ways.”

  “Take all the time you need. My only concern was, I spoke to someone earlier, someone in Portland, in our Storage Sector, and you’ve been on passive coverage for a while now, kind of a pretty unprecedented long while, and after I found this out I called North Platte, and—”

  “Never phone me, never visit me, never bump into me at Starbucks, and never, ever EAF me. Understand?”

  “If you do think you left your ear jack at Colonel Geoff’s, you might want to try to remember your conversations there. I know you’ve been helping with his memoirs, his Hollywood stories, his myth-ops tales—”

  “I’m tasting Mexican again.”

  “Forget I said that. Portland’s tight. It’s solid. As far as data storage, Portland’s like a cross between Fort Knox and the tackle box where my father kept his Playboys. Laugh. That was funny. I hate it when you hate me.”

  “That tiny jack can hear across a room?”

  “Probably not. But I meant it about Portland. It’s like a bank vault locked inside a tomb shot on a rocket into a black hole. How much do you two talk about Tom Cruise? He sent me his picture. I forgot to tell you.”

  “I want my lady in Nebraska. Put me through to her. Then get off my satellite.”

  “Your Active Angel’s gone, Sabrina.”

  “Gone on vacation? She said she had a trip planned. Czechoslovakia?”

  “Hungary. That’s where it happened. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “This is a day that needs to be all over.”

  “She was already bad, but in Hungary she got worse. Her linings. Her organ linings. They lost ‘integrity.’ They’re testing all our people in North Platte in case it’s airborne, or maybe fluid-borne, but so far it seems like it was only her. From what we’re hearing, her husband was a hunter and the family ate a lot of game. Including rabbit, which is risky.”

  “Kent?”

  “I’m sorry, Sabrina. AidSat’s mourning, too. That wise old lady was a legend here.”

  “Impossible. I don’t believe you. She was right here with me, in my ear. I can still hear her voice. She wasn’t ill. She sounded healthier than me.”

  “Maybe because she knew that’s what you wanted.”

  “Good-bye, Kent. I need to be sick again. Alone.”

  20.

  [MyStory.com]

  Steaks at the W Hotel later tonight with Rob and Jesse and Sabrina. Synchronizing busy schedules and mending tender feelings took some work, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood for other people now. And don’t take offense, Rob, if you’re reading this; my desire to be alone is nothing personal. I had a crazy day is all, and by the time I’m done recording it here I’ll have less than three hours until dinner, which doesn’t feel like enough to think things through.

  The conversation happened over breakfast. Sabrina had asked a favor of me last week during one of our wee-hours, patch-things-up calls: See Mission: Impossible III on Friday night and meet her at the colonel’s the next morning to tell him what I thought about it. As an old mentor to the movie’s star, he was eager for an early review, she said. Plus, he needed some cheering up. News had come from the VA that had complicated his diagnosis. Other than latent mononucleosis, none of the viruses they’d screened for had shown up in his samples, but they had found another member of his old unit—another media liaison officer—who was complaining of difficulty swallowing, painful urination, and chronic muscle aches.

  No lights were on at the colonel’s when I arrived. Since learning that Sabrina’s AidSat ear jack had been piping their conversations to parties unknown for going on three weeks, they’d boycotted all electrical devices except for a battery-powered radio that stood on a
shelf beside the colonel’s hospital bed. It was tuned to a national phone-in show hosted by a vicious female psychologist who, I happened to know through AidSat gossip, sometimes called in too drunk to start her car.

  “It wasn’t your old friend’s best movie,” I told the colonel. I explained then about my long letter to Tom Cruise and the paltry signed photo he’d sent me in return—a photo that struck me as neither recent nor genuinely hand-autographed.

  “Kent sent the note as a prank,” Sabrina said, though she knew very well that I’d been serious. There are plenty of stories of average Americans reaching out to the rich and celebrated and receiving gratifying responses. According to family legend, my great-grandfather had written to Henry Ford himself once about a defect-plagued roadster that he’d bought with seven years of savings from his dairy route. Days later the vehicle vanished from his driveway, replaced by a newer, more luxurious model with a telegram folded on the front seat: Because I’m concerned, sir, and because I can.

  “It’s a movie that I know I saw,” I said, “but that I still feel like I missed. You know how the effect of certain medicines—certain sedatives, certain sleeping pills—is to make you forget that you’ve taken them? Like that.”

  Colonel Geoff sucked punch through a bent straw inserted in the top of a red juice box whose sides crinkled in when it was empty. He’d turned into an ant or hummingbird, subsisting on sugar water, Sabrina said. It showed in the snowfield of dandruff on his green pillowcase and in the mottled pallor of his hands, which, after he set the juice box down, lay palms-up on his blanket as though prepared to be taken for repairs.