You Can Never Spit It All Out

by Moore, Ralph Robert

  Afterwards, you lie on your back, ashtray on your chest. Gretchen on her stomach next to you in bed, beautiful bare ass exposed, using her right index and middle fingers to straddle your cigarette, borrowing it, smoky eyes up on you, to take a drag.

  You tell her you have to go out. Things to do.

  "Okay."

  You return home a few hours later.

  By then, everyone else is back. Gretchen is dressed. She stands by the kitchen sink, amid the others, to see how you'll behave after the two of you have made love for the first time. The smell of her bare body still on you, her eyes, bigger amid the others, are the stare your eyes roll down into. You go up to her with your low-hanging plastic bag, ruffle her hair, kiss her on her lips.

  Rudo observes, but says nothing.

  You reach into the heavy sling of the store bag. Pull out a tall canister. Lift it, like the Christ child, to the others.

  "Faceicide."

  Pull out additional canisters.

  All of you go around the apartment, spraying high and low.

  Faces crawl out of the woodwork, scurrying sideways across the walls, some of them dropping off. You and your roommates stomp on their tortured mouths.

  Afterwards, using the cardboard backs of yellow legal pads, you and Gretchen scoop up the dead and dying faces, slide their crushed features into the kitchen's tall trash can.

  The sound of the front door of the apartment getting kicked-in.

  The gang strolls lazily into the hallway, rolling their shoulders.

  The dark-haired leader looks at all of you. Jerks up his jaw. "We need blood-soaked rags from each of you, especially rags soaked with menstrual blood, because my men are tired of bleeding themselves to keep the old man away."

  Holding your plastic shopping bag, you walk right up to the leader, causing his eyes to widen. Reach inside your bag, fingers scurrying down inside against the plastic.

  Pull out the weight.

  The leader falls sideways on the ground, stretched-out hand trying to stop the flow of blood darkening his left trouser leg. "The fuck?"

  You aim the gun in your hand at the chests of the other gang members. They fan backwards, frightened.

  "Get your hands under the armpits of this piece of shit, drag him out of this apartment, and never the fuck come knocking on our door again."

  They do what you tell them to do. You watch them leave, walking backwards, dragging the leader's body. Experience, for the first time in your life, what it's like to have someone obey you.

  Gretchen, obviously aroused, makes her sexy face for you.

  After dinner, most everyone drifts off, one by one, to the bedrooms. Gretchen is waiting on your bed, naked, on her hands and knees, ass in the air. You enter her from behind, start pumping. After a few deep breaths, head jerking forward, forward, she twists her face around, palm sliding her hair away from her smoky eyes. "Would you want to spank me?"

  Afterwards, your girlfriend sleeping, loud snores, you realize you're too charged-up to be in a bed.

  Wander out to the living room.

  Rudo is sitting by himself on the sofa. TV turned low, watching an old black and white rerun of The Andy Griffith Show, set in gentle Mayberry.

  You sit on the sofa next to him. Andy and Barney, rocking in their chairs on the front porch in the early black and white dusk, decide to walk down to the corner gas station, to buy some soda pops from the vending machine.

  As the TV show cuts to a commercial, maybe the last remaining face in the apartment scurries across the coffee table, all those jointed brown legs under the face, trying to make it from the base of a candleholder to the stapled spines of a pile of magazines.

  You lift the heel of your right hand off the face.

  From the face's split forehead, gray brain extrudes its toothpaste. The bearded features, tiny and dying, glare up at you. "Shame! Shame!"

  Rudo, sitting next to you on the sofa, slides his eyes in your direction, conciliatory. For the first time ever, he addresses you directly. "I hate it when they speak."

  THEY HIDE IN TOMATOES

  He wanted what every man wants, fall in love with a beautiful woman, purple mountains sloping down to orange forest, the way it should be, within the canopied silence of tree trunks, thin sinuous trails trod by animals, leading to deep valleys, rivers loud, fish jumping; beyond that, farm land, black furrows out of which rise green stalks, barn dirt floor pocked with pig and cattle hoofs; beyond that villages, deer hung upside down outside second story windows to bleed, one place in the village everyone goes to at the start of their day, to drink coffee, eat eggs; beyond that towns, streets straight and short, where everyone gets around by walking, and adjacent to the small real estate/attorney/insurance office at the edge of the business district is the first of the town's homes, set back on a deep lawn decorated with pear and apple trees, and your mother and father are always home, to watch over you and protect your innocence; beyond that small cities where the streets curve like brooks around two and three story buildings, and you don't know everyone you pass on the sidewalk, which is romantic; beyond that, tall cities, streets laid out in grids, skyscrapers reaching up to the clouds, where you get around by hailing a cab, taking a subway, or, if you're young and in love, and it's early evening, by walking the wide city blocks; within those lighted domino heights a swoop down to a shorter building, broad, squat; passing through the windows into a wide, low-ceilinged room filled with sofas and chairs.

  As always, most of the seats in the ICU waiting room were occupied. A child gets hit by a car, a grandmother falls down her front porch, everyone shows up, not just the immediate family, but aunts, uncles, cousins, all these variations of the same face spread across the wide sofas and adjoining armchairs.

  Wade walked through the 'time has stopped' atmosphere, tall forehead, prominent teeth, scanning for an empty chair.

  Swinging his head around, he met the gaze of a dark-haired woman his own age, sitting by herself. He looked away, at the endless dimensions of the quiet room, looked back. Those brown eyes, still staring at him.

  He spent his days in crowds. At a restaurant, a shopping mall, rush hour traffic, airport terminal. The hundreds of faces usually stayed a blur, nothing to notice but here a cowboy hat, there a wheelchair, but every once in a while, when he least expected it, hidden in that blur, like penicillin hides in bread, was a face.

  She had that face.

  Someone he was immediately attracted to, not because she was sexy, but just because there was something about her. Something that immediately caught his eye, and held it. A face that seemed to promise she could 'get' him. Understand him.

  He looked away a second time, looked back more quickly. She was still staring at him. That scary moment, when he has to decide what to do.

  His normally hard features softened. He smiled.

  Her face lit up. Smiled back.

  The best feeling in the world, when you smile at a stranger you're attracted to, and they smile back.

  He walked over, nervous she'd get alarmed, that her smile hadn't been meant to signal anything other than empathy for both of them being there, in the hospital, at the time of evening most people their age are at bars, or pulling pants off in someone else's apartment.

  As he got closer to her, she tilted her head up towards him.

  She was wearing a black sweater, black slacks. Long, full dark hair, not that carefully combed, probably brushed in a hurry. He had no idea what he was going to say once he reached her.

  "Mind if I share this sofa with you?"

  "Have a seat."

  He sat next to her, but not too close. "My name's Wade." He held out his hand, because he wanted to touch her, and a handshake was the most socially acceptable form.

  She put her smooth hand in his. More than anything else, her face looked kind. He liked that. Her brown eyes held his eyes, and as ridiculous as this sounds, looking into those big brown eyes, eyes without guile, he fell in love. Hearts are so vulnerable. Her face
was pale, the face of the girl next door, but just a little bit prettier. Just a little bit. With a quiet, wry smile she said, "Maggie."

  He tried to think of some non-intrusive way to ask why she was here, the worse place to be on a Friday night.

  "My mother had a heart attack."

  "Cancer."

  "Oh!"

  "My Dad. Brain cancer."

  She nodded solemnly. "I've heard that's one of the most painful cancers." Closed her eyes, he could see a blue vein across one lid. "I'm sorry, that was tactless."

  He shook his head. "No. I already heard that, from an aunt."

  Those big brown eyes, looking at him, caring. "Is he…"

  "They don't know."

  "I'm so sorry."

  "What about your mom?" And all the while he was thinking, Is this wrong? For him to be here, to help his Dad through this latest admission, but at the same time be so happy about meeting this girl?

  Her pale, pretty face tilted to one side, big brown eyes. "They say she'll be all right. I saw her just this past Sunday. She didn't seem stressed." Her black pupils switched left, right, trying to come up with an example of how ordinary the visit had been. "I helped her bake apple strudel." She touched her dark hair, opened the purse beside her, pulled out a blue brush. Said, with a self-deprecation so few people these days, overly-confident, feel anymore, "I guess my hair's a mess, right?" Small smile, both corners of her lips curling up. She tilted her head back, showing her pale, smooth-skinned throat, brushing, right side, left side, looking at him.

  He sat a little closer, more aroused by her bared throat than he would be by another woman's nakedness. "No, your hair looks great."

  "Hey guys."

  Wade's tall forehead tilted up.

  A man their age stood in front of them, curly brown hair, the type of hair that is deliberately not combed into place, so it curls everywhere, above the eyebrows, around the ears, in a studied boyish effect. "Josh."

  She stopped brushing. Thrust her small hand up. "Maggie."

  "Hey, Maggie."

  "I'm Wade."

  "What is it?"

  "Wade."

  "Hey, Wade." He sat down on Maggie's other side, closer than Wade had. His blue eyes flicked down to her breasts, back up at her eyes. "So what's your story?"

  Maggie stayed sitting with her body forward, twisting her head to see Josh. Wade got to see the back of Maggie's head. "I'm here for my mother. She had a heart attack."

  "Oh my God."

  "He's here because his Dad has cancer."

  He felt a stab, that it wasn't, Wade's here because, but He's here because.

  "Is she going to be all right?"

  "They think so. Yeah." Wade watched the back of her head nod.

  "Thank God. A heart attack. She must be really young."

  "Her older sister had a heart attack a couple of years ago. On a bus. But she survived."

  "You can go on the Internet and find out information on how to change your lifestyle."

  Maggie's body, from facing forward, turned more in Josh's direction, so that now Wade was seeing the back of her sweater. "Yeah, there's a lot of amazing stuff out there."

  Wade leaned forward, to see beyond Maggie's sweatered spine, to get back in the conversation. "So why are you here?"

  Josh spread his hands apart. "I was going to this poetry reading, over at St. Jude's Church?"

  The back of Maggie's head rose, long dark hair shifting. "You're Catholic?"

  "Yeah! You?"

  "With all my guilt?"

  They shared a laugh.

  "So anyway, I'm at a stop light, I see this old guy on the sidewalk, he's staggering, like he's drunk. But I'm thinking, he's well-dressed, it's still early in the evening, he doesn't look like the type of guy who would drink like that, so I get out of the car, trot over, talk to him. I can't smell any alcohol on his breath. I do the, you know, Cincinnati stroke scale test on him, asking him to smile, to see if both corners of his lips turn up equally, which they don't, the right side of his smile stays flat, so I realize he's had a stroke. I called 911. Now I'm here just to make sure he's okay."

  Maggie's brown eyes went wide. "Wow. That's so incredible you cared that much."

  He tilted his curly brown head. "Hey. Leave the world a better place."

  Wade tried to get back in the conversation, feeling lonely behind Maggie's back. "Who was reading at the recital?"

  "Me."

  Maggie squinted her eyes. "Really?"

  "From my new book, Stay Away From The Moon."

  "You're a poet?"

  "Stay Away From The Moon is my third collection. Do you know who Andrew Anders is?"

  Maggie raised her dark eyebrows. "I think I've heard his name."

  "He said in a review my poems are a grateful return from irony to sincerity." Josh hunched his shoulders modestly. "I don't know if I deserve that kind of praise from so pre-eminent a critic, but…"

  Wade leaned forward. "Are these self-published collections, or…"

  A nurse came over, dressed in starchy white, bent at the waist in front of Wade. "Mr. Aitken? Your father can see you now."

  He put his right hand on the back of Maggie's shoulder, which seemed to surprise her that he would do that. "You know what? We should all get together, the three of us, a week from now, to have a reunion. So we see each other in better times."

  Maggie looked at Josh. "What do you think?"

  Josh shrugged effortlessly. "Sounds good to me."

  Wade took out a notepad. "Let's exchange phone numbers. Let's definitely do this."

  Maggie raised a small hand, volunteering. "We could meet at my place. I'll cook."

  The nurse led Wade across the waiting room, past a seated family, all eight look-a-like faces rising, expectantly, as a doctor approached, faces listening, one by one lowering, in grief. Led him down a corridor with open alcoves, each alcove displaying someone in a white bed, people of different heights gathered around the rails, guests and patient all trying to be cheerful, talking too loud. With each tableau he thought, how many hundreds of people have died in that bed?

  No one was around his Dad's bed.

  His face looked like Wade's, but old. Mouth sunken, as if his teeth had been removed. He was forty-eight.

  Dirt under his yellow fingernails, probably garden dirt. He was working in his garden when he started vomiting blood.

  "Hey, Dad."

  He looked up at Wade, disoriented.

  "They're trying to find out why you're bleeding internally."

  His voice was hoarse. "Hey."

  Wade reached over the side rail of the bed, slipping his hand into his Dad's, white plastic strip stapled around his father's wrist, an intimacy that felt embarrassing, holding hands with his Dad. But then there had been so many intimacies, washing him while he could still stand by the sink, sliding the soapy washcloth up into his lifted armpits, him letting out a moan of physical pleasure; pulling his underpants down at the extended care facility, getting a whiff of his genitals, his smooth legs like a little girl's; having to flush after him.

  "Who are you?"

  "Do you remember your wife, Rebecca?"

  He kept an alert watch on Wade's face. "Sure."

  "You and she had a son."

  His watery blue eyes shot Wade an impatient look. "Yeah."

  Wade held onto the grasp of his loose-skinned fingers. "I'm that son. Wade."

  He gave Wade the most peculiar, heart-breaking look. "Really?"

  When Wade came back out into the waiting room, the sofa where he, Maggie and Josh had sat, talking, was empty.

  "I'm making us Shrimp Creole. For the vegetable I thought we'd do something simple, a garden salad." Her big brown eyes swung towards him.

  Wade nodded, standing next to her hourglass shape in the kitchen, not looking down at the vegetables she was dicing on the white cutting board, reflective sides of the chef's knife bouncing up and down, but instead at her beautiful, snub-nosed profile, the heaviness of he
r breasts in her blouse, wondering if she ever walked around in here, among the major appliances, just a white towel wrapped around her body, or nude. "I've started writing poetry."

  She pulled her head back on her neck, surprised. "Really? Somehow, I don't picture you–"

  "I call it, I'm Ready For A Woman." He blushed. "The hardest part was trying to find a rhyme for 'fish hooks'. It's in my wallet. Would you like me to read it to you?"

  "Later on, maybe. Once I've had a little more wine. Sure."

  "I have a gift for you, too."

  Maggie looked up from chopping green bell peppers. Those big brown eyes, within them all the kindness in the world. "A gift?" She scrunched her dark eyebrows into a mock-greedy look. "What?"

  Out of his jacket's side pocket, he lifted the small black box. Held it out to her, on his palm. "I hope you like it."

  Maggie saw the small square size of the black box, her knees dipping. "Wade, I just met you, I–"

  "Open it."

  Maggie lay the big knife down amid the moist piles of different-colored vegetables, reluctantly accepting the small black box, fingers wet from chopping. Looked up. "If this is what–"

  "Come on! Open it."

  She lifted the lid, like there was a bomb inside.

  But it was a pair of pearl earrings.

  She let out a sigh. "Wade, they're beautiful, but–"

  "I want you to have them. It meant a lot to me, you were there that night."

  "That's so sweet, but I don't really feel comfortable accepting–"

  "Try them on. Come on! A little old lady at the jeweler's helped me pick them out. I kept saying to her, which one are you pointing at? This one? That one?" He laughed, happy, standing next to her.

  She stepped away. "Wade, really, although I really, really appreciate the sentiment, this is too expensive a gift."