by Leni Zumas
We got back to the Mausoleum just as cocktail hour was beginning. There was an array of guests from the city’s gutterboudoirs: Mrs. Julius, the thirteen-year-old palm reader; a few strippers whose specialty was the Lapped Catholic Schoolgirls ensemble piece; a dance-hall drag queen with delicate green veins crisscrossing her cheeks; several Mohicaned squatters; a certified public accountant; a runaway from Jackson, Mississippi who had been wearing the same T-shirt for nineteen days; and a brooding man in sharkskin who claimed to have taught a famous singer everything he knew about pain during the singer’s salad days in New Orleans.
For strange people, they were strangely calm. To my eyes, used to the colorless faces and slate-lit backdrop of the Town, these guests were exotic, yet they sat with their legs crossed and were careful to ash in the ashtrays and didn’t scream or shout. I waited to be spoken to. Bill Bones stood at a marble sideboard in the mildew-stained dining room pouring blue and purple cordials into stemmed plastics. The drinks were so pretty that nobody mentioned how bad they tasted.
Shading her eyes against the glint from the cups, Mrs. Julius asked politely, What do you do?—her eyes fixed on my earlobes instead of my face.
I’m a traveler, I answered.
Oh, I see.
Among the late arrivals to cocktail hour was a girl with hair of pinkish chrome who laughed a lot and kept fiddling with the bead purse on her lap. When Squinch was introduced to her he couldn’t mask his interest. Drool glistered on his cuspids.
Pleased to, you know, meet you, he said.
You’re the rock star?
Some people think so. You coming to the show this evening?
Maybe. If there’s time. The girl, who was called Astrid, yawned. Where are you from?
New York City, ma’am! Squinch paused to allow time for this falsehood to sink in. It’s the only place big enough, really, if you know—
You’re from the city? That’s strange, I used to live there but I never heard of—
Well it’s not strange if you think about how many bands are—
It doesn’t matter. She took a cigarette from her purse, which prompted Squinch to strike a a match for her. The flame died before she could get a light from it.
Sorry, he mumbled, wiping back his forelock.
In the vacant hour before it was time to head for the club, Squinch cornered Astrid in an upstairs room. I watched by the door. I looked to see where she put her hands. They kissed standing up for a few minutes, thrashing mechanically against each other. When he hitched up her lace dress she batted him away and coughed.
I love this dress, he blithered, undeterred. It’s like, you know, like gossamer. . . . And your hair is. . . . Your hair, baby, is the coolest.
This thing? Astrid seized a hank of it and slid it off her head. Her skull, a dimpled egg, was studded with tiny black bristles.
Squinch gaped. A lady of surprises! He kissed her again and said, And are you really a boy underneath all that?
She spat out his saliva. Oh, come on.
Because you can show me, sweetie. And if you show me, I’ll show you—
I’m bored, she announced. ’M going down to get another drink.
I retreated into shadow to let her pass and saw, without having to look, Squinch standing bewildered on the broken floorboards.
The club was gouged out beneath a Chinese restaurant, with black walls and barbed wire around the stage and a huge, unnecessary fire crackling in a brick fireplace. Fifty people in mesh and leatherette were knocking back drinks. And so the boys played, I’m guessing, though I don’t remember the music; I couldn’t notice much beyond the incredible discomfort of standing in that boiling room. Everyone’s makeup was running hard and it was too hot to form a thought. The whole thing seemed depressing, the darkness and the drone and the people getting wasted exactly as they would the next night and for years of nights to come. I wanted—though the wanting concerned me, it meant I wasn’t as sick as I had presumed—to be someplace clean. I had been dizzy for three days straight and I did not want to be dizzy, nor did I particularly want to feel my stomach shriveling and throbbing from a diet of black coffee and potato chips and powdered medicines.
When I searched out the bathroom for a splash of water, hoping it might bring back some of the blood to my face, somebody was throwing up in the stall. I leaned against the door listening to the heaves. Astrid emerged, wiping her mouth and eyes. She was wearing a different wig—red, shimmery, straight to her chin.
Hi kid, she rasped. What’s new.
It made sense for Squinch to prefer such a girl, such an obviously tougher and sicker girl than I.
I pushed my way through the mirthless oven back up to the surface, where I waited on the curb until the show ended. Afterward I crouched behind a dumpster to watch Squinch while the boys loaded out the equipment. He was scratching inside his trousers, his hair had collapsed under the weight of sweat, and, unaware he was being observed, he had allowed his face to fall back into its natural lines: not sad or sick, not death’s-door theatrical, not anything but tired.
All the cabinets are in, Rabb called to him. And Teddy’s getting the money.
I need to take a dump before we leave, all right? He sloped off and Rabb just stood there, yawning, with his hands in his pockets.
We returned to the Mausoleum. Until six or seven in the morning the house was full of people who looked exactly like the people in the club but might have been different people. Mrs. Julius was there, asking again what did I do. Squinch told her I was on summer vacation and Mrs. Julius said, Oh, I see and Squinch added that it was past both our bedtimes.
When the sun was up and burning and the guests had cleared away, we settled down on the carpets of the parlor. I dreamed of the Town, of its odors: the first cold day in fall, when all lingering frowses of heat have left the air and the newly emptied chill is flecked with wood smoke, soft and bitter, the smell of anticipation; and springtime—bright, forgiving air with the hint of unannounced visitors, impending journeys. Of course no visitors ever showed and no journeys were ever taken and the smell would soon retreat, replaced by a dingy warmth. This was why the Town disappointed me so badly: it could never deliver on the promise of its scents.
Squinch was gnashing his teeth in his sleep and it interrupted my dream. The others slept on, open-mouthed. I went to squat beside him and peeled up his grimy shirt. For almost an hour I sat in wait, staring at the swollen scar.
When I pulled the stitching free, the mottled skin parted willingly. Squinch did not even flinch. There was a faint hissing—the release of air and gas from their confines, a waft of blood smell that stung my eyes—and I peered in to see the muscle itself, its chambers and arteries athrob: but there was no heart nestled there. It was only a pocket of dried flesh clinging to the ribs, sprinkled with black, spent veins. I put a finger to the wall of flesh and it was stiff.
I felt the rush of terror he had intended for me and for anyone else who saw it. I doubted I was the first girl to taste the acid on her tongue, the dread and panic and mistrust of her own eyes. I would have screamed but was afraid of his reddish lids opening. After the shock faded, I noticed that something did not look right. Something about this fantastic mess was not fantastic enough. Swallowing hard, I pressed my knuckles into the wound. The gouge was shallower than it looked. And there was a pulse underneath.
Motherless he might be; heartless he wasn’t. I wondered what sort of instruments had been used, and how much medicine Squinch had had to eat beforehand, and if he’d even dared to execute the procedure himself. I expected he hadn’t; he was not so brave. Somebody else had been called upon to make him appear gruesome.
I fumbled with the thread. All I had was the bobby pin holding back my hair, so I tied the end of it to the damp yarn, sent up a prayer, and shoved the pin into one of the crusted holes. Squinch’s shoulders jerked but he went on sleeping. I sewed and sewed, fetching sparks of blood, but there was not really so much blood, after all, and I was pleased
with my handiwork. I licked the scar clean and pulled his shirt back down.
By the time Bill Bones woke the boys, I had convinced myself Squinch wouldn’t notice. I was proud to have covered up my disobedience so tidily.
Astrid came downstairs brushing long yellow curls and wiping her mouth and eyes.
Will you breakfast with us, my lady? Squinch asked her. Standing there in a T-shirt, rubbing the pimples on his withered arms, he did not look dashing: there was too much sunlight in the room.
Astrid directed us to a pancake house. Though I’d barely slept and was dizzier than ever, I ate with relish and ordered a second helping of silver dollars, turning over the secret in my mind.
Strumpet’s got syrup all over her mitts, remarked Squinch indulgently. He took a napkin and began wiping my hands.
Rabb asked, How many hours to Mobile?
Between two and twenty. And your turn to drive. Squinch stopped wiping, squinted down. What have we got here?
I folded my hands in my lap and said, I’m full now.
Give those back to me. He frowned. I wonder where you’ve been poking these. . . .
I saw the tiny caked smear on the pad of my index finger. He dipped the napkin in a water glass and rubbed at the spot. It wouldn’t come off.
Hey Squinchs, can I finish your home fries? Squinch raised his head and told Teddy coldly, No, you can’t. We are leaving.
Still gripping my hand, he led us out with the practiced casualness of nonpaying customers who wish to exit restaurants unnoticed.
I have to go to the bathroom, I whispered in the parking lot.
Go on, then.
But if she goes back in, they’re going to—
Shut up. Go ahead, sweetheart! and Squinch smiled into the pools of his sunglasses.
In the ladies’ room I scraped at the finger, but the red refused to come off. The skin began to ache. Astrid sidled in. She took my cheeks in her hands and asked, What are you doing?
I backed away. Nothing. I just—
I mean, what are you doing following these jackasses around? Please explain it to me.
I’m not following.
Then what, precisely, are you up to?
Traveling.
Not so much anymore.
What do—
They’re leaving without you. In fact, they left.
I thought: He’s carried me this far.
Astrid continued, And he said, I quote: Bride deserves her punishment.
Why didn’t he ask you to go?
He did, last night, at the fireplace place.
They’re going to Alabama next.
I’ve been to Alabama before, she shrugged. Don’t plan to go again.
Why not?
Astrid looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. She lit two cigarettes and handed one over; it smelled like burnt sugar. Are you going to go home?
I can’t, I said.
Is that so.
Yeah.
Why don’t you go to California?
Is it nice there?
Not necessarily, she said, but people go.
I had maps of California. I knew the mileage from Los Angeles to Mexico. I’d read books about people hopping trains to get to the coast. I don’t think I want to go to California, I admitted.
Astrid paid for a cab that dropped us in front of a café where, she explained, you could sit for as long as you liked without buying anything. Then she said good-bye and went off with her blonde curls swinging.
I sat without buying anything and leafed through my notebook and inspected my finger, which was as clean as the day I was born. The blood had sweated off, the indelible stain erased. We were not like the fairy tale, as hard as he’d tried to make it so.
WASTE NO TIME IF THIS METHOD FAILS
He is the cutest at the franzy house.
He can hold his breath for three minutes.
He lies on his stomach when he pictures the fish-stick girl, so his roommate can’t hear.
He likes to watch salt dry in bronchial patterns.
He dislikes improv comedy.
He laughs when the mailman falls on the ice.
He cries when a penny is removed from his nose.
He is thirty-one years old.
He knows who the president is, but not why.
He wrapped his arms around the choking man like he loved him.
He loves his peppermint socks, on which the fish-stick girl has complimented him.
He hates his reindeer socks, on which another human once vomited.
He draws a boy with a nose-shaped stomach.
He steers clear of medical students arguing the death drive in the cafeteria.
He is no longer allowed to operate his car.
He knows his roommate hates the president, and why.
He hears the improv troupe member say, If they don’t laugh, nobody will.
He loves the fish-stick girl.
He does not love the fish sticks.
He smiles when she says, Nice socks, sailor.
He refused to let go until he could hear the choking man’s lungs making breath.
He wets his eye with a wet napkin.
He is not stupid.
He is not a genius either.
He is not a bad driver either.
He is aware, yes, of why he is here.
He is here to be judged on the merits of his footwear.
He is aware that it would behoove him to take more seriously the seriousness of his situation.
He won’t look the doctor in the eye, because the doctor has radiator eyes.
He looks him in the ear. Counts the lobe dents and hairs.
He may not be a genius, but he knows when fish meat has decayed.
He likes to pronounce decayed like decade.
He was for ten years frustrated, that old Odysseus!
He keeps The Odyssey on his nightstand so his roommate will fear him.
He draws the nose-bellied boy so his occupational-therapy counselor will fear him.
He diagnoses himself with milquetoastophobia: the fear of not making others afraid.
He asks to speak with the cafeteria supervisor.
He holds out half a grapefruit with a knife standing in it. This pamplemousse, he says, is older than my car.
He flinches when the supervisor takes a banana from the steel bowl and draws his arm back, as if to fling.
He watches the improv troupers mince across the cafeteria like milquey meat until he really feels like killing himself.
He does not agree with the doctor that sketch comedy is a sassy little art form.
He hates to ask the doctor when he can go home and hear, You are in no way capable of meeting the demands of independent living.
He notices that Hippocratic is not too far from hypocrite.
He asks, What did the skull say to the electric-shock machine?
He answers, Thank you for not smoking.
He watches the doctor not be amused.
He thinks the doctor could use some swimming with dolphins.
He was for ten years minus one year a waiter of tables.
He does not wait any longer because of the lack of amusement people such as his doctor and the police feel about the saving of the choking man.
He thinks of the saving as angelic intervention when according to New York State law it was—
He knows angels aren’t real, fuckwad!
He is sorry for saying that word.
He is sorry for letting saliva fly into the doctor’s face.
He is not allowed, thanks to that word, into the TV room for two days.
He misses watching the human-misery shows.
He misses the other humans he watches the misery with.
He misses the restaurant where he waited until the day of the choking man.
He loves how the fish-stick girl has one curl that won’t stay down.
He once wore socks with rifles on them, but she made no comment.
He
misses her in the dark.
He feels for her in the dark.
He kicked in the groin the fuckwad who said that thing about her caboose.
He hates the word caboose.
He likes the word groin.
He was an English major at a good-in-many-people’s-opinion college.
He cannot believe his doctor thinks the president of this country is doing a good job.
He wants a different doctor.
He read The Odyssey in college, so fuck you.
He will not get a different doctor.
He will not get in trouble for groin-kicking the fuckwad, because he bought his silence for ten dollars.
He recalls that the choking man was eating a ten-dollar plate of flesh.
He finds it stupid that news channels have been outlawed. Other types of misery are permissible—a man arrested for public dancing, a child born with turnips for hands, a contest called America’s Most Resourceful Homeless Person—but war footage, says the doctor, loosens the patients’ hinges.
He agrees with his roommate that hiding the bodies is an act of criminal obfuscation and that the doctor, like his Führer, would look good in handcuffs.
He likes how each color of candy in the TV room lives in its own dish.
He announces to the fish-stick girl, Human lung is a buttery meat.
He laughs when she blushes.
He adds, Whereas the heart tastes like pennies and the brains like raw lamb.
He diagnoses himself with sucrosintegrationophobia: the fear of candies mixing.
He hates when no red ones are left on account of the other humans hogged them.
He saw the choking poster every day at the restaurant, with its diagrams, instructions, beseechments. Waste no time if this method fails.
He thinks Penelope had eyes the color of go. Just like the fish-stick girl.
He is not so different, really, from Odysseus: both are sailors hunting for home.
I like the word method.
I dislike the word buttery.
I give the patients their three squares.
I have my favorites: the pigeon man, the periscope woman, the guy who intends to assassinate the president. And, of course, him.
I can’t hold my breath for long.