I lay awake, hour after hour, my head flat against the pillows, a mass of boneless rubber, a sack of boiled spaghetti spilled out on my bed. I regret what has become of me, loathe both the justice and injustice of it all, and wish I had but one more chance to handle things better. The sheets on my bed are starched and sterile, chafing against my flesh. Twice a day, one of the nurses appears in my room in order to make sure I’ve altered my position. They warn me against the sores that will otherwise gather on my shoulders and elbows, my ass and heels and hips. I shift as they tell me, though as soon as they leave, I sink back into the same immobile pose.
The weakness in my arms and legs is constant. No matter which pills I take, I remain feeble and pale. My doctors are more baffled than ever as to the actual root of my illness—my lab work reveals nothing—and frustrated by their inability to diagnose my collapse, they become divided in their thinking and subject me to a dozen new tests. One ambitious physician suspects I may have a brain tumor and sends me off for a CAT scan. The results are negative. My doctors are disappointed. Physical therapy does nothing to rid me of my languor. I’m put through my paces by a cruel son of a bitch named Griswald who tugs at my enervated frame and demands I go “Faster!” as I shuffle and groan on his creaky machines. I’m losing weight, and after two ridiculous sessions, refuse to submit to the torture of this insane man’s devices.
Another one of my doctors suggests I start keeping a journal, in order to chart my state of mind and perhaps reveal what otherwise lies at the root of my trouble. After a period of hesitation, I purchase a notebook, red and spiralled with 300 sheets of paper, and record my thoughts in a shaky hand:
Gee.
GeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGee
GeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGee
GeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGee
GeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGee
GeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGee
GeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGeeGee.
And again, Gee.
And the next day:
Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
Aaaaahhhhh! Aaaaahhhhh! Aaaaahhhhh!
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Aahh! Aahh! Aahh! Aahh! Aahh!!!!!
Ah, Walter. How eloquent! There you go now. At least you have it all figured out. After such an effort, why don’t you just lie still for a while and be quiet? Why can’t you be a good boy now, and “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Fine. Yes. OK.
I toss the book aside and give in.
Jell-O and tuna are all I eat. I favored neither food before, and while there’s nothing so especially irresistible now about either—the Jell-O is often hard, the tuna dry and difficult to mash with the minor amount of mayonnaise I’m given—I’ve no taste for anything else and consume only this for my day’s refection.
I’ve begun asking the orderlies to bring me the morning and afternoon papers, and on successive afternoons I read about eight fashion models who plan to auction their eggs over the Internet to would-be parents who desire a beautiful baby—with bids beginning at $50,000—and of Alistair Duncan, world-renowned expert on Tiffany stained glass, who was recently indicted for arranging the theft of a nine-foot Tiffany window from a Brooklyn cemetery which he planned to sell to a Japanese collector for $250,000.
Insane? (But true.) I read as well of Love and Madness:
Carlos Angel Diaz Santiago, twenty-two, in the midst of an unfortunate fit of passion, rammed his former lover’s car into the path of an oncoming train, killing her instantly. Upon his arrest, a contrite Mr. Santiago insisted through heavy tears, “I...I...only wanted to talk to her.”
Fate and Folly:
Rex Allen, age seventy-seven, the former country singer and western movie star, known—along with Koko the Wonder Horse—for such films as The Arizona Cowboy and The Hills of Oklahoma was accidently run over and killed in his own driveway by a friend who failed to see him bent over behind the car. “One minute he was there and then he wasn’t,” the good friend noted.
Vanity and Ego:
A cosmetic procedure known as Botox allows for a small amount of botulinum bacteria to be injected into the muscles of the forehead and around the eyes, erasing all preexisting wrinkles—the effect paralyzing the muscles, leaving the patient with eyebrows and parts of their cheeks that will not move. So popular is the procedure in Beverly Hills, people actually line up outside select clinics for a $99 Wednesday Botox special.
Tragedy:
In Warrenton, Virginia, Scott Zeigler, forty-one, hoping to free his six-year-old son’s toy rocket from a power line, used a fishing pole to knock the gadget down. Assuming the rod was plastic, Mr. Zeigler erred in not realizing the shaft was graphite and was electrocuted upon contact.
And back again—of course—to Love:
On the front of both the Renton Bugle and New York Times, an article on James J. McDermott, forty-eight, former chief of the investment firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, accused of leaking information about potential billion-dollar bank deals, mergers, and public offerings, to Kathryn B. Gannon, thirty, an X-rated movie actress, known in the trade as Marylin Star, whom Mr. McDermott was dating. As a consequence of their relationship—referred to in writing as “Mr. McDermott’s ill-advised affair”—Ms. Star profited in excess of $90,000, disappearing after cashing in her stocks to parts unknown, while Mr. McDermott, surprisingly earnest in his lament, confessed, “But I’ve lost everything!” An attorney for Mr. McDermott, hoping to plant a seed of doubt, said, “Things are not always as they seem. When all the facts come out, we expect the court to be sympathetic.”
Certainly, yes. All the facts, indeed. (Why shouldn’t we be sympathetic?) There always seems to be two sides to every story.
My night nurse is a small woman, the size of a child, who sneaks into my room at least once an hour to check up on me. I’ve no idea why it matters to her if I’m asleep or not. On nights she’s off or assigned elsewhere, none of the other nurses peek in or care in the least about my condition. Only this tiny creature comes and creeps inside while I lay in the dark. She seems intrigued by me, puzzled or perhaps perturbed by my presence. “What are you doing here?” I expect her to ask. “What’s wrong with you?” but she doesn’t say a word. Not once does she speak to me though I’m usually awake, frustrated by my inability to drift off when everything around me is silent and I’m so awfully, awfully tired.
Tonight she lingers longer than usual, stands nearer my bed, her face in the shadows neither young nor old, innocent nor corrupt. I remain with my head atop the pillows, my eyes staring at the ceiling, and still I can see her, perched and quiet, as inert as a bird removed from flight. Finally, after what seems an inordinate amount of time, I can take no more, and ask, “What is it you want?”
The room resonates with the sound of my voice, and when I look again she’s gone.
I feel my fever pitch as I roll on my side and glance out my window while listening to the emerging sounds of the city: car horns and distant whistles, the cry of voices, metal doors on creaky hinges opening and slamming shut. The ease with which the world outside continues on indifferent to my absence causes me to grow despondent, and pulling the sheet up over my head, I shout, “Fuck!” and “Fuck!” again and again, in desperate bursts. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!” until the word becomes my holy mantra. I cry so loud, in fact, that the day nurse eventually enters my room, and snaps, “Mr. Brimm?” (You there, beneath the sheet!) “What is the matter?”
Precisely, what? “I’m not sure,” my voice gives way to a flagellant dissolve. “I can’t seem to decide one way or the other,” and curse again the constancy of my irresolution.
After three weeks my doctors can find nothing wrong with me, and convinced I’m incubating
no infectious disease, that my heart is undamaged and my organs are absent cancer, having billed all they can for my care and seeing no reason to keep me, they arrange for my discharge. I don’t protest though I’m only the least bit better and suffer still from a fever that shreds my bowels, blurs my vision, and dissolves my remaining muscle.
A few days before my release, flipping through the paper, I spot my own name in the “Coming and Going” column in the Business Section of the Renton Bugle. The reference is complete with photograph, my head and neck inside a pale grey square, and a brief note about my leaving Porter and Evans. “After fifteen years,” the single line states, no fond farewells, good wishes, nor explanations mentioned, the terms of my dismissal already provided in a letter from Ed Porter.
I drop the paper and reach for my notebook, determined not to think about all that’s happened, and concentrating on the future, write: “What to do?” The response comes as part of a perverse denial: “How should I know? I’ve no idea. I’m in limbo. I’m in agony. I’m in hell. Consider who you’re asking.”
I turn the page and try again, and in a more deliberate tone, wonder: “Is it ever possible for events which have gone awry to, at some future point, be repaired?”
My answer this time is just as swift and instinctively I print:
Afraid not. Fait accompli. What’s done is done. All of life is aftereffect, the sting of the bee, the prick of the nail, mud slides and mountains collapsing into the sea. Our days are a process of crossing slippery slopes where each successful stride is all well and fine but it’s the one false step which forever fucks us.
The assessment is sound, though a bit one-sided, and as part of my hope for healing, I sneak into the margin: “Of course, at times, there are moments of brief redemption.”
As I can’t go home just yet, I begin reading the classifieds in anticipation of my discharge. I want to move somewhere that suits my condition, and ignoring all ads to buy or lease a handsome high-rise on the north end of town, houses to the west, and quaint getaway properties to the south, I focus instead on finding a place more unassuming; a small refuge where I can serve a period of reparation and recovery without being disturbed. I spend the morning scanning the pages until I find an ad for a one-bedroom walk-up and that afternoon place calls to the landlord and building manager. Once a deposit is wired and my attorney takes care of the papers, I’m able to obtain, sight unseen, the perfect hideaway on the lower east side of Renton. No one comes to assist with my release, and a week after the New Year I move downtown without fanfare or assistance.
CHAPTER 13
Dr. Janus Kelly lies naked on his lover’s bed, his long frame stretched out raw and spent, razed and gnawed about the edges. Despite a certain boyish glint in the flash of blue in his one good eye, his body at forty-seven appears betrayed by the consequence of several queer disasters; his left hand and right foot gnarled by separate acts of physical dissent, his otherwise handsome face conveying a slight miscarriage in its smile, his black-grey hair, narrow nose, and unshaved jaw giving him the gentle look of a man whose conflict with the world is nonetheless fierce and vulgar.
Myrian moves about the bedroom of her flat with three paint brushes of varying width and fiber held between the fingers of her left hand. A fourth brush in her right is used to shape the center of a large and lushly variegated mural with influences of Gorky and Nicolas De Stael evident throughout. “The trouble is you think too much,” she says. “Your mind’s like one of those pill crushers.”
“A mortar and pestle.”
“That’s right. You mull and mash everything down to paste.” Part of her hair is dyed orange, the center streaked blond, while an inch above the root is her natural shade of red. Her eyes are green, the surface of her skin snowy pale. Also naked, there is a pleasantry to her form, a fluidness in both her figure and motion as she wields her brushes with her back to Janus. “You can worry yourself crazy, if you want,” she says, and replaces one brush with another, drops of blue and green falling onto her feet; cool colors passing down between her toes. The paints—all water soluble—produce a harmless trace of smell, easily washed off and rolled clean with a can of Sears white when a wall is finished and the surface made ready to start over.
Janus considers and eventually concedes her point. “Maybe so,” he says. “I do think too much at times,” he has two pillows behind his head, his good eye turned and following Myrian as she moves across the floor, his legs laid out atop the blankets despite the cool air in the apartment, and taking in the whole of the scene with a mix of amusement and confusion, he thinks, “Here I am and how is that I wonder?”
Myrian shrugs her shoulders. She has long fingers and lithe arms. Her cheekbones are sharp, as is the shape of her nose, her wrists and elbows and chin. At twenty-eight, she waits tables at the Appetency Café when not freelancing for local decorators who hire her to create murals for private clients. Janus enjoys watching her work, imagines her movements as possessing the appeal of a beautiful bird in an erotic cubist painting. “I just think.”
“There you go again. Read into it whatever you like.”
“Some things should not be decided because of money.”
“In a perfect world, maybe,” she doesn’t turn to look at him, annoyed with herself for having brought the subject up. Her flat is too small after all, and how could she possibly accommodate Janus and his possessions, few that they were? What of her schedule and the way she kept odd hours working and painting? How would Janus handle those nights she didn’t come home until three or four o’clock, staying out to drink with friends, maybe dancing at the Blue Dolphin or one of the after-hour clubs where she liked to feel her body pressed against by strangers while the noise and music from some new band beat loud and louder still inside her head? What, too, of the late hours Janus put in at his clinic, the danger of addicts wandering in off the street and demanding drugs? How wouldn’t she worry about him then if they were living together when she already did so now?
Janus shifts his body back on the bed. “It isn’t that I don’t appreciate,” he says, then stops and self-consciously brings the sheet up over his waist. His penis has gone soft, collapsed down on the inner seam of his leg like a sleepy snake. Although he’s tired—it’s past midnight, six hours removed from when he’ll wake and walk the two blocks to open the doors of his clinic—he fights the urge to rest, and watching Myrian in motion, shields the sensitive half of his bad eye from the light.
Since the start of their affair, almost two years ago now, as they first encountered one another in the lobby of their building and a few neighborly conversations led to something more, Janus remains surprised by Myrian’s attraction to him. That he’s in love with her now—captivated by her intelligence and energy and the knack she has for providing him with such sweet pleasure—only makes him more attuned to the reality of their situation and the inevitability of their ultimate parting. He predicted going in she’d tire of him, put off by his half-crippled frame and the difference in their ages, and determined to keep perspective, he focuses on the end of their affair and how eventually a younger man will come and spread himself naked and wanting on this very bed. That such has yet to happen, and seems more and more unlikely, is but another thing Janus can’t quite understand and complicates all his recent decisions.
Myrian steps from the wall and turns to face her lover. A few small streaks of violet and blue appear on her bare stomach as she brings the tips of her brushes up and places them across her nipples. “What else do you appreciate, doctor?” she tries to make light of the situation, standing at the foot of the bed, her attempt to remove the tension from their exchange causing Janus to smile. He teases her then in turn, replying with a sentiment he knows reflects her own convictions. “I appreciate all of this, the absolute perfection of the moment and the whole of everything now.”
“And well you should,” she moves the ends of the brushes down, then spins away and returns to painting the wall. Several astral-like shap
es are set onto a bluish-grey backdrop, the circles and lines, squares and half-moons, cylinders and indented spheres appearing to float across the surface. Myrian drops to her knees and begins working on one of the moon figures. After a while, she bounces to her feet again and steps away in order to gain a fresh perspective, her concentration unaffected by the lateness of the hour and the sex she and Janus had not thirty minutes before. (Inexhaustible, she’s able to transform herself completely from one event to the next.) Once last winter, warmed by the heat of the old radiator and bathed in the light of a single lamp, she mounted Janus with brush in hand and paints beside her, leaning forward in order to work the wall behind the bed while Janus moved slowly beneath; undulating in a steady rhythm, his body liquid and floating along in short, hypnotic waves, like water coursing through an ancient stream, reproduced by Myrian’s hand in a series of prismatic strokes of light green, beige, and crimson.
Still in bed, Janus continues to watch her work, taking in the movement of her arms and legs which are mercurial, not nimble like a dancer but somehow more natural, her gestures unrehearsed, genuine and unpredictable, perfect in their collective display. The glow of the lamp casts Janus’s shadow up along the left side of the wall where Myrian notices him there, goes and traces his silhouette in blue with the thinnest tip of her finest brush. Janus considers the placement of his body inside the mix of Myrian’s other anomalous shapes most apt. “See how she treats me as one of her discrepant forms,” he smiles, and thinks about her invitation to move upstairs from his flat below. Tempted, he allows himself a moment when his weariness gives way to wanting. “Why not?” he wonders, but then a sudden throbbing enters his foot, cuts across his arch and down into his poorly healed bones, distracting him from imagining further. He tries to ignore the pain by focusing on the curve of Myrian’s hips and the sweet shape of her breasts, only the contrast between her beauty and his own mangled landscape frustrates him, and reaching down he bends his toes hard, working his splintered remains until the existing ache subsides briefly.
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